Hi. I’ve used Avast for years and never had any problems. I’ve just downloaded the latest version and noticed it the prices were reasonable for the ‘better’ packages. Anyone paid for the upgrades, worth it??

I was using the free one, but did a couple of scans recently (malware something and spybot) and found nearly 200 baddies!

Mind you I’ll still not pay 😡

If you like Avast (and it’s one of the better ones), stick with it. Don’t buy it unless there’s something specific you want features-wise, or you want to pay for moral reasons (which I’ve done in the past for exceptional free software).

The STW “do something else instead” answer is, uninstall it and use Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Avast is good, MSE is better.

(comparing an AV solution with a Malware scanner is apples and oranges, btw)

avast was good but the new one just didnt work correctly on my vista laptop, the old one did..

Uninstall it and use MSE.

Never heard of mse. Is that a download or packaged with windows 7?

Cougar did I upset you last night? Don’t tell your wife! 😀

No more than usual. (-:

MSE – http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

got mse on 1 and avast on the other…. just about to wipe the the one with mse and start again (with avast) as mse let all sorts of sh1t through….. 😯

Removal isn’t what it could be in MSE and the behavioural detection isn’t very good at all but you won’t notice it running and detection rates are respectable. It’s quite good really.

The Avast virtual sandbox feature (pay version only I think) sounds great for dafties who keep picking up infections browsing for free porn, but I don’t know if it works well – never tried it. Free version’s a good ‘un in my experience.

I use Free Avast, and now with added Malwarebytes. Free Avast doesn’t appear to stop malware getting on your computer (whatever that is). I started out with Free Avast, had some problems (alerts from Avast), did an Avast scan, found nothing, then downloaded malwarebytes, did a malwarebytes scan, found 2 trojans. So, it appears Free Avast isn’t absolute protection, but even though Trojans got on my computer, Avast was stopping it doing anything bad. Maybe the paid version is better, but there is Free protection software available for all this sh1t if you keep a look out for it (I’m no expert). I’m not sure if having Free Avast and Malwarebytes working on my computer is a good thing, but I’ve had no problems since.

I’m not sure if having Free Avast and Malwarebytes working on my computer is a good thing

Yeah it is, because they do different jobs.

MSE let me down…back on Avast now
I’ve no idea if Avast would have protected me on the incident that MSE failed on though 😕

AVAST free is very good, never let me down yet.

I use AVG Free and AntiMalwareBytes, I only added malwarebytes afte rI got nailed by some virus that has compromised some of my ftp sites.

🙁 Bloody romanians!

I am using Kaspersky as it was free from my bank – bit of a pain in the arse to be honest. It’s super-paraniod and keeps bugging me any time I am instaling anything.

Can you switch off the naggy bits?

Kaspersky AV is one of the best (or at least, it was a year or two ago when I last looked at these things in anger). This whole ‘total internet security’ fad is more trouble than it’s worth IMHO though – and that’s not just directed at Kaspersky, but everyone who sells them.

The problem is, as you say, they like to pop up windows to go “hey, look at me, aren’t I working well, think of all this DANGER you’d be in but for me, can I have a biscuit?” – consequently, people stop reading the alerts (not that most people really understand them in the first place) and habitually click “yes”, negating the point of asking in the first place.

Good browsing habits and common sense, a hardware firewall (your internet router), and a decent AV are all you should need, in roughly that order of importance. Sadly, the first one is the one most commonly missing.

I dunno, I can set it to ‘trust’ an installer, but that seems wrong to me – the trust list would soon fill up with crap. Plus the messages are really technical. They say stuff like ‘suchandsuch is trying to insert code into suchandsuch a process, do you want to allow?’ Now being a developer I kind of know what that means but not being a hardcore windows developer I’ve no idea if that is acceptable or not. I suspect it is, since every installer does it, but it doesn’t sound right. How on earth is the average user meant to make a decision?

It ought to accept that once you’ve selected an installer, you want to install the software so it should just let it do its thing.

Plus I’ve noticed a massive delay in opening MS Office files, presumably as it scans them for viruses. Might turn this off, or at least tweak it.

How on earth is the average user meant to make a decision?

Precisely.

Might turn this off, or at least tweak it.

What I normally do is do a full scan, once, then set the on-demand scanner to scan files or write but not on read. If a file hasn’t been written to, what’s the point in scanning it more than once?

There are flaws to this approach (viruses on removable media for instance), but in terms of risk versus performance I think it’s an acceptable trade-off personally.