Your Opinion about Avast !

Whenever I install Avast free on one of my test hard drives, I change the default skin (which I think is horrible) and replace it with the alternate SCZ-KDE. For anyone who doesn't like either of those choices, Avast offers from their website a number of optional skins.
http://www.avast.com/eng/skins.html

In terms of the GUI, it does look a bit dated, but it provides every option a user is likely to ever need.

In terms of the protection offered, Avast has steadily been climbing the ladder for detection rate and when e-mail scanning was (finally) included in the free version, that sealed it for me. Yes, a few antivirus applications test slightly higher in detection capability, but only one (Avira) offers a free version and I generally install it without the guard and use it for my on-demand second opinion scanner. With those two AVs plus a good and properly configured firewall, Malwarebytes (on-demand), Firefox with NoScript, and a good HIPS, I feel totally secure against threats.

 

What free HIPS do you recommend that would go well with AVAST?

 

i wouldnt consider avast to be bloated. its a very good av and free for home users. its good at detection and cleaning. trouble free. program updates without needing to reinstall. whats not to like?
i do think that the simple user interface should be default for on demand scanner. i know its easy to change but the media player interface may confuse users.

 

Hi gery;

If you're already running a firewall with HIPS such as Online Armor or Comodo, you already have a good program.
If not or even as a second line of defense, I really like Win Patrol. It does more than act as a host intrusion prevention application; it also offers a comprehensive startup manager, hidden files finder, cookie control and more.

About the mentioned firewalls. I'm primarily referring to free FWs; there are a number of others that include HIPS to some degree; OA and Comodo are just two of the free ones I'm familiar with.

One of the best aspects of Avast and Win Patrol is that they coexist really well with just about any other software application, thus giving the user maximum flexibility of choice.

 

wtsinnc, I've also tried the following skin awhile ago which is my favourite of the bunch MacLover OSX.

You can control all aspects of the program, such as changing settings from normal to high. Manually update the virus database etc. I just realised it must have been created by RejZor who is on the forum. Nice work!

 

Is Avast now even more lighter then then say F-Prot and could you share your opiions of which of those 2 are more likely to pick up better then the other one? Whats you experience with them?
'


Thanx

 

I am using ZA pro with antispyware
thanks for your reply

 

EASTER, my parent's system is getting long in the tooth (five years old). They had F-Prot installed for the past year and it was quick, but scheduled scans made the system a little slow. The user interface however, was probably the easiest one to use I've seen.

With Avast, I found the system to be just as responsive, but scheduled scans weren't needed as real-time scanning covers P2P applications, web browsing etc. Avast is very flexible as to how it can be configured. I prefer the prominent alerts as well, say when virus definitions are updated and when a virus is found.

***Edit - in italics above.

 

Saraceno;

Nice GUI. I wonder if there's any antivirus that offers as many cosmetic choices as Avast ?


EASTER;

I have no recent experience with F-Prot.
When I have tried it (most recently about seven to eight months ago), I found F-Prot to have very little impact on web surfing. I thought the virus scans were slow, but Avast isn't the fastest either.

Test results I've seen indicate that F-Prot is pretty much a second-tier AV, but I believe there's more to antivirus protection than a rating. I've heard for years that Frisk is consistently one of the very best for customer support and they certainly have a loyal following; that doesn't happen by accident.

I suppose the biggest problem I have with F-Prot, Eset, Kaspersky, Norton, and other subscription antivirus applications is that there are several free ones I like and trust because of real world experience. Like most people, I prefer free and in this case, I don't see a compromise in security.

 

As mentioned before, OA v3 free and CIS (Comodo firewall and D+ only) are very good ones. I am using CIS and Avast and they work real well together. There are other free and paid hips and firewalls out there that are very good. Somebody mentioned awhile back that 5 years ago they were only a few choices for good security on a home pc. Today the gap is alot closer with more good security apps out there. With Avast I don't use any skins just the simple user interface but that Mac one looks good also.

Ice

 

I highly doubt anyone getting infected with 30 rootkits as they aren't that widely distributed in the first place - You sure they werent false positives?

Hmmm a friend of mine experienced the exact opposite, serious lag with avast and none whatsoever with avira

 

I understand you, but i am talking here about my relative that is totaly noob in security.
That computer was directly conected to the network without a router in between.
There was used the firewall from XP SP 2.
Although it was installed AVG 7.5 free antivirus and Spybot Search and Distroy no one seemed to do some scanning on demand with them in the last 3 months(this was happening somewhere in august 2008 ).
That computer was used intensivelly for mail,messaging and web navigation (with Internet Explorer).
At that moment i was in a hollyday and my relative,which was living nearby, called me because the computer was booting into a black screen and was unusable.I was able to scan in safe mode and even AVG found 10 trojans on demand.Spybot Search & Distroy found around 20 ,some of them leaving leftovers found by Avast installed after i was able to enter Windows normally.
The computer protected by AVG was totally messed up,never seen something like that.AVG was coexisting with all those trojans without doing nothing at default settings and stragelly it was up to date.All the 3 partitions had a huge quantity of hidden files.
Almost all proceses were detected by Avast as infected.
Maybe some of the Avast detections were false positive but not all of them.I am talking here about a computer infected to the bone in a real life usage.
I use Avast while gaming without encountering lags ,the automatic update is disabled especially to avoid lag spikes.With Avira i felt my computer a little slower.All the antivirus software i use are tweaked to the max for the real time scanner.
Another plus is that Avast is also available in my native language and this extends the number of users ,now many of them being able to use better the product(scanning and serrings are easier to do and understand).
I dont force you to use it or to belive me , we are leaving in a freeworld.

 

What exactly do you mean by "uses even more resources"?

 

Actually your reponse is a good read

I wasnt questioning Avast's ability to pick up nasties, i questioned the high amount of rootkits - trojans are more widely seen especially on highly infected pc's. The behaviour (not picking up all the bad activity) of the av installed prior to infections, in this case up to date avg is the same with Avast so ive seen. Offcourse you wont have to worry, being a visitor here

 

I think since avast version 4.8 was introduced (most recent version), the GMER anti-rootkit technology is built in.

 

I mentioned earlier that I installed the free Avast! AV on my daughters computer yesterday and it immediately found 77 incidents of a trojan. Well, today my Daughter was surfing and suddenly a siren came from the computer followed by a dialog box saying something like don't be alarmed Avast! just picked up some malware and placed it in quarantine. Now that's cool.

 

That has to be the Webshield, one of the reasons I feel that web scanning is an excellent idea for novices, in that case it stops the virus right in the pipeline instead of it coming to the browser cache. Of course real time protection will do the same, but stopping it before it comes into the system is a better idea.

 

And if she had the speakers turned half-up, she would have had the shock of her life. Something like 'virus has been found!' and the old nuclear radiation symbol pops up. Funny stuff.

 

I know Kaspersky has scared me with it's detection sound.

 

Not surprising.
(rename the attachment with a .wav suffix to make it work.)

 

Exactlly

 

main reason I do not like it because it doesn't have scheduled scanning.
None of my clients are going to remember to do a scan at any time and if it did it by itself it would be much nicer.
I still go for AVG 8.0 free and if that doesn't work I put on Avira Free.
both are free and have scanning options.

and yes i could write a script to make it scan but then I really do not have time to do that for every computer and sometimes it doesn't work.

robin

 

It takes 1 min. to set up an Avast! scan using task scheduler.

AVG is causing way too may problems, especially with the recent webscan fiasco and now the FP on user32.dll that wreaked havoc on a lot of systems.

 

Let me guess, the famous pig squeel? I almost **** myself when i heard it for the first time. God, who decided to include a PIG SQUEELING into antivirus.

 

Yep, that's it.
Angry wild boar tune.
Imagine the unwary on first hearing that with the volume up!