Don
Neither. Avast Free.
Poll: *** The All New Windows AV Thread - Keep All AV Questions in Here ***
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Soldato
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I'm using Bitdefender free. I tried Avast recently and found it caused opening small files to be quite slow which I do quite a bit of. Bitdefender has a simple tiny gui and just works in the background like Windows Defneder does, which I used to be a big fan of but apparently not well supported by MS these days. So if you like to install and forget about and no see anything from Bitdefender could be worth a look. Most AV's I suppose are 'install and forget about' but remember avast for example having popups and displays things in web pages etc. Basically I don't want to see anything from the software unless it finds a problem.
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Don
Never noticed a speed issue with Avast, did you leave Deepscan enabled? May that have been the issue?
I have heard good things about Bitdefender, though it did cause issues when I tried it on my work machine the other week, not sure why.
Soldato
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Microsoft Security Essentials.
Soldato
MSE or Avast. both free.
Then go buy some sweets for £20
Then go buy some sweets for £20
Just install Avast Free with minimum features ie no Software Updater or browser cleanup etc....Also untick all the community feature boxes,I find it better then Bitdefender Free (having used both) because it does not interfere with games like Bitdefender does(crashing Origin launcher for example at random times) and you can customize it better as well options wise.
I leave deepscan on by default,no slow downs on my system at all.
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Qihoo 360 not only blows Avast/MSE/AVG out of the water for prevention and detection, but it's super light and fully featured. It's a triple engine (HIPS, cloud + Bitdefender) setup which runs really well on even old computers. There is also automatic sandboxing for layered protection. It's also free.
ESET Smart Security all the way been using this for over 4 yrs now without any problems, you only need 1 key then use it on any other pc's/laptops in the household
stay well away from norton & avast
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Qihoo 360 not only blows Avast/MSE/AVG out of the water for prevention and detection, but it's super light and fully featured. It's a triple engine (HIPS, cloud + Bitdefender) setup which runs really well on even old computers. There is also automatic sandboxing for layered protection. It's also free.
Too bad it has double the performance usage on most of the other top AVs,I guess they do blow it out of the water on that
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Soldato
I've used Bit Defender free since the dawn of time, install it and it disappears never to be seen again until you get a virus.
that's not a great AV then...
Too bad it has double the performance usage on most of the other top AVs,I guess they do blow it out of the water on that
It's actually a very light AV and rated 5/5 for system impact by AV-TEST. Don't put too much stock in the likes of AV-C which are 'sponsored' by bigger players. AV-C reckons Kaspersky is one of the lightest AVs when in truth it's the opposite - fantastic detection but incredibly heavy.
Install Qihoo for yourself and check it out. Even if it did have 2x the CPU usage of the others listed (AVG, Avast) it'd still be worth it for the fact it catches 98% - 100% of 0day malware in real world tests when the likes of Avast, AVG and MSE struggle to hit 35%. Check out malwaretips.com for some real world daily tests and see what I mean. If 3% CPU usage means the AV actually works, I'm in... lol
In truth it's not like that, and that graph even lists Eset as being six times heavier than Kaspersky which is laughable!
Soldato
So why not change it then?
Avast and AVG do well on AVTEST too,I do have a problem with a Chinese company with no forums so will avoid Qihoo,fact is no issues for me with Avast which has a better false warnings scan as well then Qihoo according to AVTEST
.Remember every AV company has to react to new virus threats ,so they are always behind so to speak ,don't read too much into detection rates since they change day by day ,hour by hour even from the same AV company,I have seen AVG,AVAST,Kaspersky,Bitdefender etc get 100% detection,but fact is its always changing .
The question you should ask is have I had a virus with Avast or any AV I use,answer is no
,but then I use common sense and malwarebytes,hardware firewall,UAC on full etc as backup,user is the weak link most of the time not the AV.
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Permabanned
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Microsoft security essentials.
Avast and AVG do well on AVTEST too,I do have a problem with a Chinese company with no forums so will avoid Qihoo,fact is no issues for me with Avast which has a better false warnings scan as well then Qihoo according to AVTEST
Remember every AV company has to react to new virus threats ,so they are always behind so to speak ,don't read too much into detection rates since they change day by day ,hour by hour even from the same AV company.
It's quite easy to do well in a test with known reference sets. If you're actually interested check out the real world daily 0day malware pack comparisons on malwaretips and see the difference. Avast struggles to detect 35% of 0day where Eset and Qihoo regularly more than double that score. Benchmarks and real world performance are often two different things, so while AV-Test and AV-C can be handy don't take them as gospel over real world testing.
If Avast makes you happy then great, I'm not saying don't use it. But with the OP asking for a better alternative then Qihoo is it for free, else Eset for paid, using real world daily testing. I'd rather an AV that catches 98 to 100% of malware in real life than one that struggles to hit 35%. JMHO.
Of course, protection is better than detection - which is why the likes of Comodo does so well despite generally weak signatures. The sigs don't detect but the multi-layered sandbox and HIPS kill 0day malware every time. But again this is why I recommended Qihoo as the free option as it has exceptional HIPS, a great cloud scanner as well as Bitdefender signatures meaning it consistently leads the pack in daily testing for both detection and prevention.
I didn't recommend it because it's popular, I recommended it because it works and can be shown to work where others pale into insignificance.
Of course, protection is better than detection - which is why the likes of Comodo does so well despite generally weak signatures. The sigs don't detect but the multi-layered sandbox and HIPS kill 0day malware every time. But again this is why I recommended Qihoo as the free option as it has exceptional HIPS, a great cloud scanner as well as Bitdefender signatures meaning it consistently leads the pack in daily testing for both detection and prevention.
I didn't recommend it because it's popular, I recommended it because it works and can be shown to work where others pale into insignificance.
Others work too but then you and I can argue it's a preference thing so back to square one.
I think we can agree it's better then MSE,infact most decent free AVs are.
Caporegime
Kaspersky, you can get 3 free licences if you bank with Barclays online.