D oes anyone use AVAST security program

[Clipper]

I recently downloaded AVAST anti virus/ anti spyware software for free. I was using "System Suite 8" from Avanquest for the last year, but that expired the other day, so I thought I would try the free programs that I had heard people speak of on here.

Also I would like for someone at some point to help me remove the expired program from my harddrive. I can't seem to find any removal tool when I go to "my programs". How does one go about deleting that stuff?

[Ralph]

Do I chastise you now or later for not calling me???

I have been using avast! for about 8 or 9 months now, ever since AVG got to be to invasive. Works great and in "real-time". I have found it be much better than AVG was. I believe it was Dave that first pointed me towards it.

As far as the removal of you other software, best for me to walk you through it on the phone when we can get a chance. Oft times there are different ways that you have to go to remove some parts of different programs, though Norton is by far the worst of the bunch.
There are apt to be a few relics left behind that can often bog the system down for no reason.

Let me know and we'll get together and "git-r-done" Clipper.

[chris]

I am using AVG. When my computer crashed last July the tech added back AVG but I noticed it runs much better now than the previous version (unless the trojan somehow affected it) I read that AVG and Avast are both great programs but that AVAST needs more maintenance than AVG does. Maybe you can give us a comparison. Before that I was running Nortons but decided not to renew my subscribtion because it started to get really bad interfering with everything. I hesitated to use free because I have it built in me that nothing is for free and was worried that it might not fully protect me. Even though I removed the Nortons myself I still had hidden files that I had to call Nortons to fully remove.

[Clipper]

You can chastise me either now OR later Ralph, haha. One of the bad things about the "system suite8" program is that it does not show you a subscription date or expiration date anywhere, and it sneaks up on you with a notice that you expire TOMORROW. I assume that is to entice you into taking advantage of the offer to renew NOW with an online credit card renewal out of sheer panic, LOL.

So at about midnight, the night my old program would expire, I went browsing about, looking at AVG and Avast. (talk about procrastination) I downloaded avast as a stopgap measure, but I think I like it. My computer seems to load pages faster than it did with the old program.

I know you are quite busy with work and your work around the house, and I have a million projects going on here, trying to get the house ready to sell, should that be the option that we pursue. With that in mind, I am in no hurry to dump the old program. It doesn't interfere with the operation of the computer, and isn't bothering me any, so there is no rush.

When I bought the System Suite program and dumped McAffee, I had problems with getting the new program to run with the old one still loaded. That has not been a problem this time, thank God.

Hell with my lack of computer knowledge, I should just have TWO, and an aluminum shipping case with foam padding, so I could periodically ship YOU one PC along with a check for the services rendered, and YOU could undo all my goof ups and clean all the crap from my registry, LOLOL.

Thanks for the offer of help though, and I WILL eventually get to it, and will appreciate your help as always.

[kim]

I use avast on Ralph's recommendation and I love it.

[Clipper]

Yep, I am loving it also, so far. Maybe I accidentally did something right, haha!

[dgriffin]

I've used Avast, AVG and McAfee. I have removed Norton from the computers of more dissatisfied customers (friends) than I can count. (I didn't know I had that many friends, and don't forget the special Norton removal tool.)

I thought I was using Avast on Ralph's recommendation. Seems the best. I have a memory problem here (only 256 main meg), so I notice any slowdown immediately, including Firefox's inordinate use of memory (although I recently found more fixes for that.)

I tried Comodo, both their surfing protection program and resident shield, but it REALLY slowed things down. I went back to AVG for a week just a month or so ago, but it slows things down more than Avast.

A few days ago, for the hell of it, I timed a bootup from pressing the on button until the hard drive light went completely off. With Avast it took 6 and 1/2 minutes. Without, it was less than three. I think a lot of my frustration might stem from starting Firefox, Thunderbird and Firezilla all at once as soon as I can after bootup. As they all fight with Avast for memory, the first quarter hour of computer operation is a tug of war while I wait for operations to take place.
Lesson: start the machine and go do something else for six and a half minutes. It's not as if I don't have other things I need to be doing, rather than playing with the damned computer!

[Clipper]

Haha. I didn't know that there WERE other things that I should be doing other than sitting at the computer. I hardly ever shut my computer down. I just leave it on and it goes to sleep at the same time I do.

When I DO shut it down, I simply come out of the bedroom in the morning and boot it, go get my coffee and my paper, read the paper, and by that time the computer is up and running. Hell, I could not tell ya how long it takes. I KNOW it is much faster than it was with the System Suite program. Another disadvantage with SS was that it required prompts from the user to do anything. It always frustrated me to start a scan with SS, and to come back later to find it had only run a part of the process and was waiting for a prompt from me to continue. The SS program was NOT user friendly OR fast. But then again, it DID come from Walmart, and WAS on sale for $39 when I bought it, compared to renewing my McAffee for $69 at the time, LOL. It was recommended by a friend at the time, but shortly thereafter, the friend was asking me if I liked it, because he was finding it to be a pain in the butt.

[Ralph]

Whenever you're ready Clipper. The whole thing shouldn't take more than a few minutes to do over the phone.

Dave I am surprised, with just 256MB that you are able to do much at all!! Windows XP needs that much just to run, let alone actually do much of anything.
Throw a 512 chip or a 1gig chip in there and you will really see a difference in what you can do with it. Gets a lot less frustrating.

[dgriffin]

Yes, I know. And I'm running XP SP2 on the desktop, but SP2 won't install on the laptop, so it's still SP1. (They're both 256 meg.) I haven't upgraded the memory because I keep telling myself I'm about to buy a new computer. I'm now looking at the HP Pavilion with 3gB. I like the mini tower (about the size of a PC speaker) and can sure use the saved space. ( I have my PC set up with my radios and would rather have more room for them.)

Re the Firefox speedup, I used a lot of hints on this page:
kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak

and also FlashBlock and another extension that deals with Adobe. I didn't do a professional job and measure memory usage of Firefox with each change, but when I did measure it at the end of all the changes, it cut the memory usage substantially ... sometimes by a third.

The graphics programs and mail client really slow things down, then add Avast. Typically, I might have firefox and thunderbird open, then add irfanview and ms paint and firezilla and wysiwyg web page builder when I'm working on the website. Then for a special graphic funciton, I might try to open Gimp. That's when I start to get into trouble, unless I remember to shut down thunderbird mail first.

[corner]

isnt avast somethings pirates say before they prepare to board your ship?

[chris]

Arrrhhh, Arrrrhhhh!!! Ye Matey ;D ;D ;D

[Will]

As a former Avast free home edition user, I have found that Avast while good at identifying risks to your PC, it lacks the ability to remove issues from your PC if they get by detection. I've found that doing a virus scan with Avast often times I would get a message that "Avast could not remove (said virus)", causing me to scour the internet for manual removal options for any given virus.

I've used previous versions of Norton and like many have been HIGHLY disappointed in it's performance and frustrated when trying to remove it from my HD. That being said however, I currently use the latest version of Norton (2008 or 2009, not sure) and I am VERY pleased with it. It does a very good job preventing threats to your PC, uses very little system resources and if a virus does get by and for some reason the software cannot automatically remove it, the program directs to to a link from Symantic to download the manual removal tool for the virus in question.

My system is below.


Here is a screen shot of my Norton console showing very little demand on system resources.


And finally, if you don't trust Norton's account of system usage, here is a screen shot of my windows system monitor. Note my RAM usage is at 63% only because I have Adobe Photoshop CS4 running and that is a large program.


All in all I would recommend the latest version of Norton anti-virus.

[Ralph]

I'll have to check it out.

I have a brand new HP Pavilion Special Edition desktop waiting to be hooked up, but still in the box. I imagine it has the newest version of Norton on it for trial and all that crap.
Just trying to get my office back together and get a third monitor for it before I set it all up and do some test runs with it.

It will be my first PC with Vista on it, so I am eager to see what will amaze me and what will disappoint me at the same time!

[chris]

Maybe Norton improved their product since most subscribers jumped ship. I remember when I first bought my PC that it came with a free trial and was rated as the best in all the computer magazines along with consumer reports.