Is Avast better then AVG or AntiVir? Leo Laporte says NO!

[kotrtim]

I don't really care about old viruses, or how much an antivirus can "catch" in those test, the most important thing is being able to stop an outbreak (that can do serious damage) a.s.a.p....

I can't afford buying programs like norton, I've tried 3 free antivirii avg, antivir , avast.... Avast uses the most memory ( I hate that but it seem 4.7 uses ~10mb less RAM than 4.6) Again n again, avast offers the best update, the only true incremental update, Antivir 7 recently added incremental update but still so much inferior, the updates will be as big as 500k, or 1 MB alternate days.....kinda burden for 56k modem users

RejZoR, I find anitivr heuristic very annoying, so many malwares warnings if set to high

[TAP]

I don't really care about old viruses, or how much an antivirus can "catch" in those test, the most important thing is being able to stop an outbreak (that can do serious damage) a.s.a.p....

I totally agree with you in this point, but it looks good to get 99.99%-100% scores in those test, at least for marketing purposes.

Avast use the most memory ( I hate that but it seem 4.7 use ~10mb less RAM than 4.6)

Yes, that's what I've noticed and been more happy with the new avast! 4.7 as it's lighter and seems to use less RAM than the old avast! 4.6.

[RejZoR]

Heuristics aren't annoying. I've used it on High (always) and got just 2 false positives which were fixed asap.

[Starfighter]

My friends and I really like avast because it updates itself automatically in a manner that is unobtrusive and reliable. 

Anti-vir is a good product.  However, their free version does not auto-update as nicely as avast.   

AVG is okay, but the interface isn't as nice as avast.

I vote for Avast as being the all-around winner!   

[TAP]

In my mind, any antivirus can guarantee reliable protection only if it is updated as soon as possible when its new virus database available, so good update mechanism is very important for any antivirus solutions, no matter how good is scanning engine or level of overall detection rates, if those antivirus lack of good update mechanism so it's not that good and not reliable.

Fortunately, avast! has an excellent and more reliable update mechanism even in its free version.

[hlecter]

In my mind, any antivirus can guarantee reliable protection only if it is updated as soon as possible when its new virus database available, so good update mechanism is very important for any antivirus solutions, no matter how good is scanning engine or level of overall detection rates, if those antivirus lack of good update mechanism so it's not that good and not reliable.

Fortunately, avast! has an excellent and more reliable update mechanism even in its free version.

The technical part of the update mechanism is of course important, and at that point
Avast IMO is on top.

But the update mechanism is not only about technics, you have to generate the virusdatabase ASAP to take care of new malware/threats, and here other factors than technics come in, too.

Had this part been as good as the part you mention, Avast would have had detecton rates and speeds much better than it has today. 

But it's ok for me. Still like Avast, but just wanted some balance.