Avast Antivirus

[sushiljbl]

Any one can tell about the avast antivirus is it successful antivirus ?

[Dem57]

EDIT: ops

[Crokey]

From what I've heard it's a good Anti-Virus program, I'm using AVG Free myself and that's good enough for me, as long as you've got a good firewall in place then you'll be better protected.

 

You can always try it out and see what you think of it (sice it's free), if you don't like it then uninstall it and install something else.

 

I'd also get a good Spyware program as well, like Spybot S&D.

 

Are you protected well enough by a firewall? That is what I'd make sure of first.

[SWEETSAPRIK]

It's not easy for a layman to judge an A/V program's effectiveness at finding malevolent bits. Usually when people are comparing programs they've used they're talking about speed of scans, the size of the program, the resources it uses, etc. Comparing their ability to find things is more difficult since you'd first need to have something on your PC for it to find, and second you'd need another A/V to have found something your's missed. Having more than one A/V program on the same PC at the same time is not a good idea.

 

When independent reviews of A/V programs are done they all tend to miss something. Some have better heuristics, others are lighter but can miss older things (that most likely wouldn't be a problem anymore anyway.) I've heard complaints about every A/V program, Avast no more or less than others.

 

That said, A/V is in my opinion less important than things you can do to prevent infection. I use Firefox (with NoScript and Adblock installed) and none of the A/V programs I've used have found anything in more than a year. When I used IE and had no firewall I would find something non-critical at least once a week. As Gareth said, get an A/V (I also currently use AVG Free), then something to clean other assorted adware/malware. SpyBot S&D is good, I also use hijackthis. As with any of these programs, don't go removing things unless you're sure you don't need them.

 

Really though, A/V, spyware/adware/malware removers, etc. are for removing things you've already picked up. Things like firewalls, safe browsing habits, (or in my case Firefox with Adblock and NoScript) are preventative measures. I wouldn't run without an antivirus program, but it's nice that I never have anything for it to find.

[cold fusion 33]

I have been using AVG for ages and have only had a few threats. Where as my friend had been using McAfee and when I scanned his computer it had 9125 worms.

[K^2]

Last time I tried using Spyware S&D on a friend's laptop, I ended up having to do manual registry recovery. That means taking out laptop's HDD, hooking it up to PC, changing permissions on the recovery directory, locating the backed up registry, and writing it over the Windows' hive files. It is not fun to do. So while S&D does locate a lot of problems, use it at your own risk, and only if you know how to manually restore a system.

 

As for Avast, it is a decent antivirus. It might not save you from every kind of worm out there, but together with firewall and careful internet practices, you should be able to avoid getting screwed. Plus, it doesn't hog resources quite as bad as some other antivirus software, so it is definitely a good choice if you don't have a lot of cycles to spare.

 

Everything that Sweets said applies, though. So it is all relative.