AVG or Avast?

[Martin]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent 'problems'
with AVG7:

From the point of view of what actually works better, i.e. finding a virus
and stopping it, what is better - Avast or AVG? (or something else??) I
have used AVG Free for many years and have been very happy with how it
works, but it seems many people think Avast is even better - is this true or
is it simply personal opinion?

TIA

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Personal preference. If you use one and it works, stick with it. If it
gives you problems, give the other a try. That's the nice thing about
freeware

Personally, I like Avast, but I haven't tired the new version of AVG, so
can't really speak to it.

 

[Kjell Harnesk]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent 'problems'
with AVG7:

From the point of view of what actually works better, i.e. finding a virus
and stopping it, what is better - Avast or AVG? (or something else??) I
have used AVG Free for many years and have been very happy with how it
works, but it seems many people think Avast is even better - is this true or
is it simply personal opinion?

TIA

AVG7 has IMO a better interface but after having problems with updating AVG
for a few days I tried Avast and it found 4 viruses om my machine that AVG
had not found. Also the e-mail scan is much faster in Avast. It´s extremely
slow in AVG.

 

[Dave Cohen]

I prefer Avast, seems to me when I tried AVG I had to do a full scan to find
a detected file, could have been me. Also, AVG kept finding certain files
possibly infected. These were files that had been on my machine from dos
days and were part of logitech mouse programmer's development kit. Also
updating definitions is smoother with Avast. I'm happy with Avast but I also
use mailwasher and don't see viruses period.
Dave Cohen

 

[Jester6]

I've tried both recently and settled on Avast. I used AVG for several years
but their update and other GUI problems became too much hassel. Avast is a
bit more difficult to understand at first. Their "skins" and control menus
seem overly complicated and somewhat convuluted to me, and take awhile to
fathom. Also you probably don't need to install or run all 6 of their
"providers". I'm only using 3 of them: Internet Mail, Network Shield, and
Standard Shield. I'm not sure if Network Shield does me any good, so it may
be optional. Either I have other software to handle the other things for
their other 3 providers, or I don't use the software/service that they deal
with. Avast email scanning is better than AVG, lower level, and no
complications like with AVG's proxy server method. I also like that I can
exclude certain folders from Avast's scanning, including on-access scanning.

What they both lack is the ability for user to designate other things/ports
to scan such as SSL POP3/SMTP (like with Gmail), and NNTP (news). I wonder
if any virus software provides that kind of versatility? If so, I might just
buy it.

 

[Martin]

Thanks to those that replied.

I think after AVG decided to find a virus but do nothing about it on my
daughters computer it was time to change..

 

[blackfoot]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent 'problems'
with AVG7:

From the point of view of what actually works better, i.e. finding a virus
and stopping it, what is better - Avast or AVG? (or something else??) I
have used AVG Free for many years and have been very happy with how it
works, but it seems many people think Avast is even better - is this true or
is it simply personal opinion?

TIA

I have been useing AVG for a while now, updated to ver.7 and all seems
ok to me.

Never had any problems with it scans emails, update, to me it been
good, fast ? well I dont know as I am no computer expert.



Blackfoot

 

[pete]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent 'problems'
with AVG7:

Avast.

 

[Boris Mohar]

Avast.

I had a look at Avast on line scanner and got the following message:

"Parse error: parse error in /var/www/onlinescan/avonline.php on line 162"

Hmm...

 

[pete]

I had a look at Avast on line scanner and got the following message:

"Parse error: parse error in /var/www/onlinescan/avonline.php on line 162"

Have fun with AVG, then
+o

 

[Martin]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent 'problems'
with AVG7:

From the point of view of what actually works better, i.e. finding a virus
and stopping it, what is better - Avast or AVG? (or something else??) I
have used AVG Free for many years and have been very happy with how it
works, but it seems many people think Avast is even better - is this true
or is it simply personal opinion?

TIA

OK, thanks everyone. I think that was an overwhelming vote for Avast!!!

I changed the daughters computer to Avast after AVG kept finding a virus but
did nothing about it! On her computer I needed something that would detect
and then take action, but this was running a scan, finding it, then leaving
it there.

After I installed Avast I ran a scan and found 2 more virus's that AVG had
missed, and one of them had been there since September when AVG6 was in
control! And yes, before anyone asks AVG was updated regularly - it would
look for an update daily so should never have been out of date.

Anyway - so long AVG. I once thought it was the best, but now I'm really
not that sure it was ever any good. My advice to the current AVG users -
CHANGE!!

Cheers, and Happy New Year to all..

Martin

 

[History Fan]

I can't say which one is better at finding viruses, but I prefer Avast
4.5 (free edition). I've tried McAfee, Norton, eTrust, and AVG (free
edition). So far, Avast is the only AV that hasn't caused any problems with
the performance of my computer. It also has a slick-looking interface; like
a car stereo dashboard.

One minor thing that annoyed me about AVG 6 is that after the
definitions were updated, a window would pop up announcing this. The window
would not go away until I closed it out. With Avast updates, there is a
announcement window (and a audio announcement) but the window goes away
automatically after a minute. Or sooner if you click on it.

 

[Martin]

I can't say which one is better at finding viruses, but I prefer
Avast 4.5 (free edition). I've tried McAfee, Norton, eTrust, and AVG
(free edition). So far, Avast is the only AV that hasn't caused any
problems with the performance of my computer. It also has a slick-looking
interface; like a car stereo dashboard.

One minor thing that annoyed me about AVG 6 is that after the
definitions were updated, a window would pop up announcing this. The
window would not go away until I closed it out. With Avast updates, there
is a announcement window (and a audio announcement) but the window goes
away automatically after a minute. Or sooner if you click on it.

I think you'll find that the update window on AVG also goes away after a
while, especially with auto update. A counter at the top would count down
from 59 and if you didn't click OK would close the window when it reached 0.

I found AVG better than things like McAfee and Norton when it was picking up
virus's that these two were letting through, but like I said the experience
with the daughters computer has opened my eyes a little. It was bad enough
that it was detecting a virus but not doing anything at all about it - not
even moving it to the virus vault or asking what you wanted to do, but when
Avast found the other 2 on there as well, one with a creation date of
September, that really was the death bell for AVG.

I wasn't happy with AVG after the changes made in ver7, but I wasn't sure
what else was available in its place. Seems that all things combined -
failure to detect, failure to act, plus the problems following the recent
changes - AVG is now a good one to avoid!!

 

[Roy Coorne]

I can't say which one is better at finding viruses, but I prefer Avast
4.5 (free edition). I've tried McAfee, Norton, eTrust, and AVG (free
edition). So far, Avast is the only AV that hasn't caused any problems with
the performance of my computer. ...

I like Avast very much, but its detection capabilities seem to be less
than perfect, see. e.g.
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/products.xml?table
or the 1/2005 edition of the German computer magazine c't.

I prefer Kaspersky which is most comfortable, too, since it changed to
version 5.0.

Roy

 

[speedlever]

OK - question for those that know...

Ignoring personal preferences, what 'looks' better, and recent
'problems' with AVG7:

From the point of view of what actually works better, i.e. finding a
virus and stopping it, what is better - Avast or AVG? (or something
else??) I have used AVG Free for many years and have been very happy
with how it works, but it seems many people think Avast is even better
- is this true or is it simply personal opinion?

TIA

I'm running AVG7 on my laptop and Avast 4.5 on another PC on my home
network. My main PC (P4/2.4 GHz) runs PC-cillin IS 2005.

I have no real complaints about any of the above AV programs. An earlier
version of Avast that I tried used lots of resources and gave false
positives. Now that AVG has moved to V7, it seems to use about the same
amount of resources that Avast does. I haven't played much with Avast
4.5 yet, so I cannot comment on false positives at this time.

For the record, I ran eTrust on my laptop until the subscription
expired. I then loaded PC-cillin 2005 but it consumed too many resources
on my old PII/400 MHz laptop so I moved PC-cillin 2005 to my main PC
when my NAV 2003 subscription expired. I then loaded AVG7 to the laptop.

On the 3rd PC (a 400 MHz/PII desktop), I ran AVG6. It currently runs
Avast 4.5.

None of the PCs have shown any evidence of a virus after loading the new
AV program, which indicates to me that the prior AV programs did a good
job. Of course, we don't participate in risky browsing either... and use
Firefox as the main browser.

YMMV.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F8ren_Skovgaard?=]

I've tried both recently and settled on Avast. I used AVG for several years
but their update and other GUI problems became too much hassel. Avast is a
bit more difficult to understand at first. Their "skins" and control menus
seem overly complicated and somewhat convuluted to me, and take awhile to
fathom. Also you probably don't need to install or run all 6 of their
"providers". I'm only using 3 of them: Internet Mail, Network Shield, and
Standard Shield. I'm not sure if Network Shield does me any good, so it may
be optional. Either I have other software to handle the other things for
their other 3 providers, or I don't use the software/service that they deal
with. Avast email scanning is better than AVG, lower level, and no
complications like with AVG's proxy server method. I also like that I can
exclude certain folders from Avast's scanning, including on-access scanning.

What they both lack is the ability for user to designate other things/ports
to scan such as SSL POP3/SMTP (like with Gmail), and NNTP (news). I wonder
if any virus software provides that kind of versatility? If so, I might just
buy it.

Hi Jester6 !

You can configurate AVG 7.0 with all the topics you mention - so you
just have to buy it !

My regards
Søren

 

[Dennis Freshwater]

Hi Jester6 !

You can configurate AVG 7.0 with all the topics you mention - so you
just have to buy it !

My regards
Søren

....and avast 4.6 (free) does have the ability to scan NNTP, together with
all files downloaded from the web, which should cover Gmail.

 

[Martin, VK2UMJ]

...and avast 4.6 (free) does have the ability to scan NNTP, together with
all files downloaded from the web, which should cover Gmail.

Not to mention the fact that Avast doesn't suffer the ongoing problems with
updates that AVG users seem to continually complain about!!!