Is Avast Free good enough to use?

Internet Mail (and Web Shield) doesn't change anything if you're using Windows 2000/XP.
It's perfectly transparent. You only need to change settings on Windows 9x systems. I also recommend you use Network Shield provider along Standard Shield and Web Shield. This module doesn't slow down connection,disk access or make make memory consumption higher. But it provides greater protection against malware that works similar to Sasser and/or MSBlast.

 

I noticed a script blocking provider but cant locate it within the program. Is this set up by default within the web sheild provider?? Sorry confused. but read up on it in the help section but it dont explain how to turn it on.

 

Well I am using Avast! Pro not free but all I can say is it really is a nice AV overall compared to some of the others I have tried before. Another thing for me is I run XP x64 so I am limited to what will run on this platform but from the x64 compatible options that I trialed, Avast! Pro won hands down for me. It used less memory than Nod32 did on my x64 system, however Nod32 did still feel very quick running on my system. The reason I chose Avast! was it found more malicious things on web sites I had visited than Nod32 did, so in the end I felt it was giving me better protection. I know all about the tests and reviews but quite frankly they don't mean a whole lot to me as they are very subjective and easily influenced by many factors, but when I can visit a web site and avast gives off an alarm and stops the threat and then visit the same site again using other AV and it doesn't say a word, well thats what matters to me. Besides while Nod32 is a really nice AV, it like all of the others out there has it shortcummings too. In the end for my needs Avast! Pro was the way to go and I am extremely happy with it thus far. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants a good AV and their forums and support is top notch. I would love to see Alwil reall take off and with Avast! I can't help but think they will. Alwil is the kind of companyI want to do business with and their products are truly good.

 

This provider is only available in Professional Edition...

 

Script Blocking provider features only in avast! Professional Edition. But if you use avast! Home, as far as I know, Web Shield will scan scripts via HTTP traffic in real time as well.

 

ok thankyou.

 

Yes, you'll see both praise and blame about avast! and other AVs at the same time, so don't believe in everything you see, try it yourself and you'll see. It's funny that some people I know don't like avast! because of it has a free version and has sound/skins (but a good malware protection, HTTP scanner, great updates mechanism of avast! are simply forgotten) while those people simply praise eTrust EZ just because of it's not "labeled" as freeware.

For me avast! Home is the way to go. I have licenses of a big name AV from the company I work but for me avast! Home is better in many aspects, I've used avast! Home on my personal laptop and used it on every computers in my home network with no infections or problems.

 

Good to hear !

I prefer to use pay-AV on my main computer, but I'm using free-AV on two other: both have Avast and AVG, Avast resident and AVG as backup on one, the opposite on the other. Avast free is working great in the two roles, that's the one I advice to friends who ask me about free Av

you can play with skins, it's fully configurable, light, efficient: a very good product !

 

Although I use Avast myself and am very happy with it, I consider a skinnable interface on a "security" program not only unnecessary but undesirable. I say "unnecessary" because, unlike a browser, for example, I do not sit all day looking at my anti-virus software (in fact, I rarely look at it at all, even when scanning) so it does not matter to me what the interface looks like, although ideally it should be reasonably straightforward to use. If the interface is poor, then, in my opinion, it is up to the authors to get user feedback and redesign it, they should not expect me to have to search for a skin that improves it.

I say "undesirable" because skins (and/or the way that they work) are a potential source of security holes which is definitely not good in a program that is trying to protect me! There have already been cases in other programs where malicious skins (or at least the possibility of them) have been found.

Just my personal opinion.

patermann

P.S. If you are wondering why, given the above, I still use Avast, it is because I have had bad experiences with AntiVir and AVG, both of which had an update at one time that made my PC unbootable (at least it would not boot up normally). Fortunately, I am reasonable knowledgeable about PCs and was able to use selective bootup (F8 at startup) to disable the AV enough to get the PC up so that I could uninstall the corrupted AV. Pity the poor user with only one PC and limited knowledge of how to use it, though!

 

I don't like avast! skins but I can choose to use the skinless interface and I really like it.

 

The skinless interface is plain, simple and really looks so good.

 

Skins have nothing to do with exploitability of the program. At least in the avast!'s case...

 

Hi Patermann, must say that I was surprised too, first time I saw Avast was fully skinable: unusual for an AV. But I'm fine with it, for two reasons:

first, if Avast is actually skinable, I guess the Avast team know what they are doing as providing it ! you're right, skins were involved in security flaws for some other softs, so if they provide it for an AV, on the official site moreover, I'm confident in thinking there's nothing to worry about, here .

second, I think it's a chance, because the skin who comes installed with Avast is, hmm, a little bit ugly : then, you can fix that "problem", there are fine skins available ( I'm using the Brushed one now, but just saw yours, REjZoR: it's great too , might give a try ), for every tastes. Or even no skin, as did show TAP, this neutral interface is nice too.

Oh, well, your AV is not the GUI you are looking at all the day, but if that can be nice without altering in any way its efficiency, where's the problem??

And Avast update is working fine, as you said. Here, I had one time a problem, as Avast is just back-up on the computers I'm using it: It did turn on the resident feature, one time, as updating the program. But it did never happen again since , and I just had to modify its installation just after, that time.

 

We say that Avast is a resource hog, sorry to say but I use Avast Pro on one of my PII 266, 256MB RAM and W2K SP4 and she works like a charm, sorry I dont see any resource hog here thats for sure.

 

There are a lot of people who look at the task manager and complain about memory usage, cpu spikes etc .. The funny thing is, if they didn't look at the task manager they wouldn't complain, since their computer runs as smoothly as ever.

 

Don't know if it fully right but I used to check the physical memory on my machine, avast! takes about 15-20 MB with all providers installed, so is it bloated or hog? I really don't think so. I think checking memory by watching Mem Usage/VM size in the task manager is relatively wrong.

On my machine, avast! Home runs perfectly and is relatively as light as eTrust EZ, NOD32, AVG.

 

When i read this i ask me sometimes what do people expect from memory usage?
I mean it shouldn't be that difficult to understand that the AV program has to store (and to keep) data in the memory - mainly for speed reasons.

It starts already with Virus Signatures and/or even CRC's.
You cannot load and initialize a virus base for every file which gets scanned and free this list till you scan the next file. Impossible. Now let's do some very simple calculating:

Assuming we have 100.000 Signatures a 32 Bytes this takes 3.200.000 bytes.
Divided by 1024 this gives us 3125 KB. Again divided by 1024 we have around 3.1 MB only for virus signatures. Depending on the AV program this might differ of course.

For CRC Offset Scanners ( Around the Entrypoint ) you have to store several CRC's. Most engines of this type using 2 CRC's and a so called "FirstWord".

CRC's are done with DWORD's. DWORD's are declared as unsinged long, meaning 32 Bit Datatype, using 4 Bytes. Means again you have to store 2 x 4 Bytes ( 8 Bytes ) and for each CRC a offset. This offset you can store in a 16 Bit WORD type (2 bytes). 2 x 2 = 4 bytes

meaning CRC = 8 Bytes + 4 bytes = 12 Bytes.

Then you need to know in which "pages" you have to look at this offset.
Again, 2 bytes more. 14 Bytes so far. Then you need a byte for the filetype, that you know which virus can infect which filetype. (it's useless to search for a win32 fileinfector virus in a batch file...)

15 Bytes. Then you need at least a flag what to do with this virus if detected. Meaning if it's a fileinfector virus and you can clean it you have to store there a value that the engine knows yes, i can clean this, there is no need to remove the whole file! Based with this fact the question is where do you store this information HOW TO CLEAN THIS VIRUS? Of course also in the virus database. Telling the engine which section to remove, where to obtain the original entrypoint etc.

And... most important thing regarding memory... Virusnames....
If you have 32 bytes virusnames, just calculate it again with 100.000
We have then already around 6 MB only for this - WITHOUT ANY CLEANING INFORMATION !

Of course you can "outsource" these names in an "offline" file and just link to an index via a DWORD (4 byte) Value and load this virusname file only if a virus was found and make a "lookup" for this Value. Saves around 2.5 Megabytes but will terrible slow down the machine if you're scanning on infected malware.

Meaning ATLEAST 5 or 6 MB already gone for the very basic feature: Detecting "dumb" malware by signature/CRC.

Next thing is unpacking and emulation.... You have to map the files for emulation into memory. And please don't think that you have to allocate "only" the filesize what you see on your harddisk. That's wrong. You have to load all sections with there HEADER SIZE. Meaning SizeOfImage from the Header reflects the true memory what you need. Therefore, if you load this file for emulating it will ALWAYS use more memory than it wastes on your hard disk, regardingless how well the emulator is written. You can fine tune this, but this is not the point of discussion right now.

If you have a proper structured stream based (stream means for each filetype a own virus base stream) engine including cleaning information you will have A LOT OF MEMORY TO ALLOCATE only for the detection.

Then the interface is another thing. As more buttons and options you have there as more it will consume. Graphics included.

I mean it doesn't make a big difference between "a few" Megabytes as long as the scan speed is acceptable. I for one would prefer to have 5 MB more memory usage instead of scanning with 512 KiloBytes Memory usage and using a own virtual page file for swapping

8>) H.B.

 

Hehe i'm telling this for ages. Some say:"It's using 20MB of RAM!!!!!" (or even more). But most of the time this is just reserved memory space which is not actually used,some components share same memory space but Task Manager shows every process as separate module using separate memory space.
So you can have 3 processes,each taking 5MB of RAM (as from TM).
But under the hood it can be using only 5MB of ram and other two processes just share same memory. And RAM is quiet cheap in these days. And i can live with 512MB without a problem with any AV from Norton to avast! and Kaspersky.

15-20MB of RAM and around 20MB of pagefile is completely acceptable (if we look at TM stats of course).

 

And a lot of people don't even need to look at taskman...a simple "seat of the pants" feeling of the computer is all we need. IMO Avast is a bit on the heavy side....I used to install AVG on clients computers all the time where I'd have to use a free AV...but since AVG 7 came out...it's also gotten a wee bit heavier...so I've been installing them both lately (not at the same time...saying one on one computer, another in another situation, etc). I'ts not bloated heavy either...but I wouldn't call it light. But hey....it's free, so you know the old "can't be choosers" adage.

 

Fair enough. Espically for those poor sobs running 128 or 256MB RAM for windows XP that is true, though how many of such people are here remains a mystery.

So much for the seat of the pants feeling eh?

 

No, not at all....the above mentioned things are not easily seen by people in something as simple as task manager.

I work on computers in various environments (mostly all types of small businesses) all day long every day as my profession. Be it working on existing rigs, or new deploys...in various environments...with different products, with rigs of all sorts of various horsepower/age. From free AVs, to off the shelf retail AV products, to business/corporate AV packages. For many...many years...so I have no problems describing something as a "seat of the pants feel" on how an AV impacts a system.

I can tell the difference on my P4 3.4GHz rig with 1.5 gigs of RAM on a 10krpm Raptor HD, since one of my hobbies is online gaming with FPS type games (Battlefield 1942 my current fave). How someone has the patience to deal with it on a PII 266 rig with only 256 megs of RAM, wow...kudo's to that guys patience...I'd be less frustrated growing coffee beans, drying them, roasting them, grinding them...to make my cup of coffee each the morning.

There's bootup time, theres Windows Explorer tasks, opening of program tasks, opening of documents tasks, how a game runs if you leave real time protection enabled...all sorts of things that "seat of the pants feel" can tell you....which as mentioned above, is based off of things other than memory usage in Task Manager.

To some people it really doesn't matter...and that's fine. To other people though, a slight slowdown will bother them (such as myself), and there should be nothing wrong with that either. It's all in what your expectations and demands are.

 

Really? I find all that you say pretty obvious and wrong in some parts...

Be that as it may, you do see the irony about talking about "seat of the pants" feeling, then immediately start up with a paragraph about the correct may to interprete readings you get off the task manager.

 

Well it's your own fault if you're running Windows XP on only 128MB of RAM. XP's were never designed for such small amount of memory. 256MB is better but still lots of swapping (paging to disk). 512MB is a minimum to work smoothly and 1GB of RAM is highly recommended today.

 

Thats one heck of a set of pants you wear

Why don't you explain to us what effect AV's have on games, other than loading time ? Especially with your rig and its 1.5gig of ram ?

AV's
BitDefender
avast!
AVG 7
Norton 2005

Benchmarks
3D Mark 2000
3D Mark 2001
3D Mark 2003
Code Creatures

System
AMD A64 3400 @2520mhz, Nvidia 6800 GT, 74g Raptor HD with 1gig of ram
AMD XP 2600 @2100mhz, Nvidia 6800 Ultra, 80g 7200rpm Maxtor HD and 512mb ram.

With the AV's enabled and disabled the benchmark scores stayed the same with each system.

Simple test anyone can do, placebo effect ? seat of the pants ? or face reality ?

Of coarse if your system uses the page file while gaming, that suks whether you have an AV or not

I agree

[edit]= forgot v-cards in spec's

 

How? So you're saying there aren't other aspects that determine an antivirus programs performance hit, other than pure RAM utilization? You're saying how AV program perform realtime file protection does not impact performance?