any advantage to swtich from avira free to avast5 free?

[Homer Simpson]

since moving to win7 last year i had to find a new av solution. i previously used symantec corp edition which was freely available from a previous employer per the license. anyways, since i dont work for them anymore, i couldnt move to newer versions and the one i had didnt like win7.

so i moved to avira free and have been running it on all 3 of my win7 machines (two game rigs and a netbook). ive not had any major issues. its never detected anything ever, not even a FP which i hear happens with avira. my biggest gripe is the annoying pop-up every day. it will kick me out of a full screen game when it pops up. also, it appears to be strictly filesystem av/malware with no outlook plugins.

i loaded avast5 free on a family member's pc a little over a month ago. ive not really used the pc since, but during the initial setup and first scan (which found some crap) i was poking around. seems it does filesystem av/malware, has an outlook plugin and even does some web monitoring. then there is the game mode that disables all pop-ups and audio alerts. and the cache thing that will only real-time scan files that havent changed since last scanned. all sounds like cool stuff in my book.

so is avast5 free as good as avira free and/or better? seems like it does more. i just dont want to lose the "lightweightness" of avira. it uses little resources and its always on (i never disable av for gaming and such). add in the fact that i also have a WHS and avast supports that (my WHS is currently unprotected) and its looking pretty good. on the flip side, avast5 is new and may have issues (though patches seem pretty regular), avast5 is not available for WHS yet, only 4.8 but im less concerned about that to be honest. ill get it for WHS when they release 5 regardless of what my desktops are running.

opinions? thanks!

 

[Mem]

I prefer Avast 5 to Avira mainly because I had issues sometimes with getting updates with Avira,Avast 5 looks better and has better layout/options IMHO,resource wise mine is at 10,000k so its low on mem usage too.

I like the options Avast 5 has like silent/gaming mode,disabling options etc...plus it always updates fine on the net(unlike Avira from my personal experience).

Bottomline its personal choice and both are good free AVs but I'm sticking with Avast 5 on my Windows 7 PCs.

 

[MrChad]

I thought Avira's detection rates were far superior to Avast's? Maybe Avast has improved with version 5.

I use Microsoft Security Essentials now. It's resource usage seems reasonable, it updates silently, and unlike Avira I don't have to do any sort of hacks to disable nag screens.

 

[Mem]

I thought Avira's detection rates were far superior to Avast's? Maybe Avast has improved with version 5.

I use Microsoft Security Essentials now. It's resource usage seems reasonable, it updates silently, and unlike Avira I don't have to do any sort of hacks to disable nag screens.

MSE uses a lot more ram then either Avast or Avira,detection rates vary from week to week ,also I have seen Avast beat Avira and vice versa depending where and when you read AV test results.

Yeah those Avira nags can be a pain, however there are ways to disable them,however Avira does seem to have an ugly layout/interface compared to MSE/Avast IMHO.

 

[evident]

search on how to disable the avira popup. it's very simple.

 

[inspiron]

search on how to disable the avira popup. it's very simple.

There is no way to disable to the popup... Avira free, isn't free for no reason. It advertises it's big brother. :sneaky:

 

[Lemon law]

Having the delicious choice dilemma of choosing between two excellent freeware AV's in Avast and Avira can present a certain difficulty deciding.

In most AV comparatives I have seen, Avira has the slightly superior detection rate but not by much. However, for those people who receive a lot of email, the balance may tip to Avast because Avast free has incoming email prescanning and Avira personal does not. If you want email prescanning with avira, you have to purchase the full program.

And that is my reasoning for using Avira on my computer and putting Avast on my wife's computer.

 

[Binky]

I started installing MS Security Essentials solely because it doesn't time out after a year, requiring you to re-register. It's another way that I can idiot-proof computers that I help support.

Sure, re-registering is easy enough to do, unless you installed it on a computer used by your mom/neice/nephew/brother/sister, or anybody else not smart enough to tell you about the damned nag message telling them that their anti-virus has expired. I don't know what's wrong with people. Really, it's not that hard...

 

[Nintendesert]

Computers scare some people, but I prefer to install MS Security Essentials on my parent's computers too. The recent products from MS to include the Win7 upgrades from Vista for them have simply worked without much upkeep.

They'd always call me about problems with Mcafee that they got for free from the ISP, but not anything since switching to the MS stuff.

 

[smitbret]

I've been using Avast for about three years now. I have tried Avira, NOD32, Kapersky and even Symantec in that period. I keep coming back to Avast. Light on resources, updates frequently, scans everything and has a really good boot-up scan.