Antivir v. Avast

[BigTimeNovice]

Can anybody give me their pros/cons on the two including:

1. Footprint and scan efficiency (speed, resource utilization)
2. How well each can catch viruses
3. Can you turn off the sounds on Avast?

Thanks!

[fink]

I don't have Antivir installed but on one of my PCs Avast uses less than 30megs when idling. Approx double that when doing an active scan of the hard drive and CPU usage jumps around from about 20 to 60% during that scan. Otherwise when just surfing etc Avast is barely noticeable resource-wise.

It usually takes less than 15 minutes to scan my C: drive which is about 4Gigs used on a 10Gig partition but that will vary depending on the computers/drives stats, speed etc.

Turn off sounds by right clicking the main Avast icon, select settings>sounds>disable.

I'm perfectly happy having Avast on this particular PC but I always double check any file I download with an online multiscanner such as Jotti. http://virusscan.jotti.org/

Kaspersky is still my favorite and I run it on my main computer but I don't want to pay for multiple licenses for more than one PC.

[HAN]

Can anybody give me their pros/cons on the two including:

1. Footprint and scan efficiency (speed, resource utilization)
2. How well each can catch viruses
3. Can you turn off the sounds on Avast?

Thanks!

IMO, they are the 2 best choices for freeware AV's. I have looked at both within the last year and I could live with either one if I wanted to go "free".

Pros for free AntiVir
Excellent virus catching ability (check out the latest tests here http://www.av-comparatives.org/ )
Runs reasonably light
Many configurable options

Cons for free AntiVir
Displays a small ad after updates (though IMO, it's not very obtrusive)
No email scanner for attachments. Only paid version has this. (IMO, a very minor issue. Just save any attachments to the desktop and right click/scan them there. If there are any live viruses in the email itself, you are fully protected by the real-time scanner.)
Some users have had "issues" with version 7 of AntiVir. In most cases, users are able to figure things out. But you might want to read through the AntiVir forum for more info http://forum.avira.de/board.php?boar...c663fce45d899b

Pros for aVast!
Good virus catching ability (but not as good as AntiVir)
Runs quite light
Many, many, many configurable options
Several interface skins available for a customized look
Can give users audible alerts for updates, viruses found, etc. (can be defeated as fink noted)

Cons for aVast!
No scheduler available for manual scans (although a workaround of sorts has been posted at aVast's forum)
aVast!'s interface can be confusing (the number of options can be overwhelming)
aVast! is free but it requires registration approx once a year (should be pointed out though that to my knowledge, your email is never spammed)

Those are my thoughts in a quick nutshell. I do think that which ever one you end up going with, you should still consider some type of real-time anti-spyware (or some type of intrusion alerting software.) At a minimum, something like free WinPatrol. It's not a perfect solution but it goes a long way toward keeping your PC cleaner.

[lgbpop]

An additional plus for AntiVir is daily automatic updates (which create the small ad after the update as noted, no big deal at all).

My AntiVir Guard (the active part) is running right now at 2.2MB; peak while doing a full scan is about 34MB. The other part of it runs at ½MB, peaks at 3MB.

The best thing I can say about it is that in addition to our five home computers/laptops and my wife's computer at work, I've installed it on 30± customers' computers in the past 7 months and not one has had any intrusion whatsoever. It kills my repeat business, but my customers are happy.

[BigTimeNovice]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I have decided to try antivir. I had avast about 2 years ago and it irritated me with all the noises and trying to seem so fancy and futuristic. I also read on another forum that avast scans were significantly longer than antivir.

[HAN]

I also read on another forum that avast scans were significantly longer than antivir.

aVast! is not the speediest manual scanner. But like everything else in aVast!, the setup of the manual scan is very customizable. So scans can be quite short or very lengthy, depending on how it is configured...

[BigTimeNovice]

Does the ad for Antivir with each update make you click to close it or does it just go away after a certain time?

[Crimson Blonde]

I have to click ok