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Thread: Avast Antivirus Software

  1. #1
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    Antivirus Software

    Anyone have any view on Avast Anitvirus ?
    -

  2. #2

  3. #3
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    I've used AVAST and liked it a lot. It never failed me during the time I had it on my computer. If I hadn't been given a free license for Kaspersky 4.5, I'd probably still be running AVAST as my primary AV.

  4. #4
    I didn't use it yet, do you recommend it?
    Don\'t Be So HumblE>>>>
    You aRe N0T tHaT GreaT<<<<

  5. #5
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    I'll recommend AVAST to anyone. It's a good program and, like I said, if I didn't get this free license for another brand, I'd still have it on board.

  6. #6
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Avast seems pretty good to me .

    Maybe I will "race" it against a few others


    On a test machine you load several AV apps and then try to read a diskette full of baddies

    Cheers

    BTW......it does OK on its own IMHO

  7. #7
    The Doctor Und3ertak3r's Avatar
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    Chuck56,

    1/ Did you have any probs with Games, media files or playing DVD's?
    2/ any serious lag in opening Office files (ie &gt;15secs on a 150k Excel sheet on a 2Ghz system)
    3/ and when you removed it did you have any problems ie Java or Search companion?
    4/ Any niggles that may seem unimportant..

    Cheers..
    "Consumer technology now exceeds the average persons ability to comprehend how to use it..give up hope of them being able to understand how it works." - Me http://www.cybercrypt.co.nr

  8. #8
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Und3ertak3r

    Good thinking there mate! only gave it a short "virus" test......on a labrat machine, so I did not do any serious compatibility testing like you would on a reference machine?

    Chuck 56.............my tests were on Windows98se, and purely on virus detection........NOT stability or compatibility. Und3ertak3r has hinted at some problems, so I will test those issues first.

    It will be 98se and Office 2000 pro PIII/533/320Mb

    Get back to you with results........anything else I should look at mate?

    Cheers

  9. #9
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    Und3ertak3r

    I never had a bit of trouble with any of the things you mentioned. I'm running XP home, 1.3G Athlon and 512RAM on a home built machine. As far as "games" I don't have any, other than MS Flight Simulator 2004 (and friends would kill me if I called it a game). Office opened at normal speed, even when running a scan. AVAST is light on resources, so I wouldn't worry about any slowdowns, assuming your running more than minimum RAM.

    When I remove any of the Antivirus or Firewalls I fool with, I go into registry and remove all leftover files, including .dll traces, if I can find them. The only antivirus that really left lots of garbage laying around was Norton, and I'm still finding it. ZoneAlarm did the same when I checked it. AVAST cleaned up pretty easily. Most of the stuff it removed itself during the uninstall.

    I don't have any but MS version of JAVA so can't comment on Sun's real Java. With MS's stuff, no trouble.

    As for complaints, I honestly have none. AVAST is good. It's reasonably quick, has a fair unpacking engine, caught most of what I threw at it. What it didn't catch were trojans and worms, but to be fair, it caught most of those too. It isn't Kaspersky or F-secure in that regard. To be fair, no commercial antivirus other than Kaspersky, F-Secure, McAfee, and a couple of others rate excellent with worms and trojans. AVAST, I think, averaged around 80% in that regard, not bad for a free program. Again, if I didn't have a free license for Kaspersky, I'd be running AVAST.

  10. #10
    The Doctor Und3ertak3r's Avatar
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    Ok That is close to what I was after.. Thanks for that Honest evaluation

    To be fair it is a rare AV that won't interfere in some way with Games (here I am talking UT2003 WCIII etc)..

    When installing progs on my production machines.. I run a registry snapshot/Compare prog, as well as a System File snapshot and compare, this helps with the cleanup.. certainly when some prog removals cause damage that Sys-restore wont fix..

    As with many things Speed, reliability, compatability, effectiveness all suffer some trade-offs. And With AV progs it is normaly Effectiveness and compatability or Reliability and Effectiveness that we notice more than any other..

    thanks Chuck56

    Cheers
    "Consumer technology now exceeds the average persons ability to comprehend how to use it..give up hope of them being able to understand how it works." - Me http://www.cybercrypt.co.nr

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