BeeJ said:
Stan Brown:
Been using Avast with no problems for years until recently.
I have had two or three updates of the engine within just a few days.
The first of the group of updates had a serious problem that caused me
big problems. The latest update fixed that.
but with each update the newer updates have added advertising for other
products. this was not the case in the past. Also, the unobvious
checkboxes to include installs of other stuff are anoying. Gotta watch
closely otherwise I get freebee junk that I do not want to burden my
"Windows experience".
Avast and AVG were both highly rated a few years ago. Wonder what that
rating is now? Compared to Windows Essentials etc.
While many users point at the av-comparatives.org ratings, another and
perhaps easier way to compare them is to look at VirusBulletin's graph:
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/rap-index.xml
The higher the dot, the better the product is at in detecting current
pests (reactive detection). The farther to the right, the better it is
at detecting yet-unknown pests (proactive detection). So the closer the
dot is to the upper right corner then the better the product is overall.
The VB graph does not, I believe, include scoring of products to account
for an excessive number of false positives (which result in users
wasting lots of time, getting needessly alarmed, and can result in
screwing up apps or the OS). AV-comparatives has some testing on false
positives. VB also doesn't account for incomplete cleanup *and* repair
of the OS and apps after removing malware. While I use Avast, it is not
tops at cleanup since their intent is to thwart infection rather than
have to cleanup the mess. Personally I prefer the quick and sure method
of restoring from image backups (to get back to one before the
infection) rather than rely of immunization or cleanup by security
software (which is never 100% in all cases or even in most cases).
The OP and many respondents have not stipulated if they are discussing
freeware or payware versions of their choice in security product. There
are few (maybe two) free AV products included in VB's graph.
Av-comparatives tests just the payware products. I don't know of
equally reputable testing sites that rate ONLY the freeware products.
For example, while freeware Avira rates higher in reactive detection
than freeware Avast, freeware Avira doesn't monitor as many infection
vectors as freeware Avast. You have to get payware Avira to monitor the
same infection vectors as available in freeware Avast.
There are other factors involved in choosing an AV or security product,
one of which is will it work on YOUR system. I might be using freeware
Avira except for a lingering over 3-year old defect in the product: if
any program polls the storage devices (hard disks, optical drives, etc)
then Avira - on my system - will start re-polling all storage devices at
1-minute intervals. This means external drives will not sleep. It also
means you'll hear the floppy drive, if you have one, groan every minute
as it get accessed. Avira doesn't differentiate between polling a
device to retrieve its properties from firmware on the device versus
accessing the device to commit writes. They claim they cannot reproduce
this bug although I'm not the only one reporting it. So I might want to
use freeware Avira but I can't which means I have to look to another
solution. There is also the nuisance factor: if a product nuisances you
too much then it degenerates its usefulness since users will quelch the
product to be nuisanced less. While there are workarounds (for now) to
get rid of freeware Avira's splash banner (when it loads) and adware
popup window (when it updates), and because workarounds can eventually
be thwarted by the product owner, I stick with Avast because the only
time ads are in my face are during installs (as started this discussion)
but which can be easily configured to not include the foistware or when
I'm in Avast's config UI (which isn't often - and if I were there often
then I'd be looking at a different solution). My ISP's webmail pages
are adware laden as are some free e-mail provider's webmail pages;
however, I only use e-mail providers that let me use standard e-mail
protocols (POP, IMAP, SMTP) so I never have to be bothered with the ads.
They're ad-supported products or services but tis easy 'nuff not to see
the ads.
As to Microsoft's Security Essentials being better than Avira or Avast,
that isn't evidenced at av-comparatives or VB. While MSE does have an
edge (over some competitors) in cleanup after getting rid of malware,
MSE also detects less pests. So cleanup is better but over a small
range of pests. After all, we all know picking the easy well-known
targets let's us hit them easier. As for impact on the host, MSE is
light *except* during updates. Every AV product will impact
responsiveness of the host when it is updating itself. Obviously that's
a given since any process to do anything will have to consume some of
the resources of the host. When MSE updates (on several hosts with
varying versions of Windows and hardware), I've always notice a slow
down in responsiveness of the host, so much so that I start wondering
what's wrong with the host and then hunt around to find the culprit is
MSE updating itself. The update doesn't take long but that's a rather
subjective measurement. Short for some may be nuisancesome to others.
For MSE, just a "net stop" command is all it takes to kill it. Other AV
products are more robust in protecting themselves from 3rd party
termination.
However, no security software can overcome the users. If security
software wrenched away all control to protect the system, users would
find their system unusable or undesirable. It is entirely possible to
not install any AV or security software and still not get infected.
Depends a lot on what the user does.
