Avast needs Herustics

[gery]

How come we are sensitive to the fact that AVAst supposedly lacks heur but not to the fact that it detects 99.... of the malware?
Question 1- what the heck does it lack or miss with the 99% detection?
Answer- Nothing ! It has it all . glory
 guys it is a very big antivirus. No need to become a fan boy. I have used AVG KASPERSKY AVIRA PCTOOLS BLALAALA BLA  . All of them have weaknesses, and please do not tell me they don't we all know they do.
They are heavy nagging sloppy mushy gushy .
Avast is simple plain usable and 99% secure and none better than AVAST

[DavidR]

It is not that avast lacks heuristics that people are sensitive to (as you say), just that heuristics isn't the be all and end all to protection, and as has been mentioned elements of avast already use what could be classified as heuristics.

[.: L' arc :.]

-= Well, we could say that it is 99% & really close to perfection.. But still, in my opinion, while there is room for improvement, let's take opportunities & try our best to make the 99% higher.. even a 0.1% or 0.2% counts..

[Mr.Agent]

Well 99,2 % of virus is better than nothing. Also for people that pay they got a extra protection and thingy. So yeah its worth of what they pay and yes some times they will say Avast! will fail to block something like that but no 1 anti virus will can stop all malware of the internet !!! So a anti spyware or anti malware is required as second scanner so if Avast! didnt catch some then your second scanner will got a chance to see it. So 99,2 % chance of detecting the virus on internet and the 0,8 % then the anti spyware or malware can maybe detect it. Also many users take Avast! as a firewall but its cover only the network like i say its for help the firewall but yeah its not a firewall. But its comming soon. Let wait and be enought mature to wait their version 5.0

Sry if i offensed some guys or something but its was needed my speech.

Mr.Agent

[Reductase]

While the on-demand AV Comparatives of 2/2009 showed about 98.2% detection rate for Avast, the Nov 2008 proactive/retrospective report shows what behavior blocking/heuritics is capable of doing.  While Antivir and Kaspersky showed a detection rate of 60-70%, Avast Professional showed 30-40%.  While it may be easy to dismiss this, this is what the OP is referring to and should be recognized for the improvements that are possible.

[Vladimyr]

While the on-demand AV Comparatives of 2/2009 showed about 98.2% detection rate for Avast, the Nov 2008 proactive/retrospective report shows what behavior blocking/heuritics is capable of doing.  While Antivir and Kaspersky showed a detection rate of 60-70%, Avast Professional showed 30-40%.  While it may be easy to dismiss this, this is what the OP is referring to and should be recognized for the improvements that are possible.

Is there a % breakdown or detail of each product's detection of samples by algorithmic, generic, heuristic, behaviour analysis, behaviour blocking, or other means?

[calcu007]

You can see it here

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/report20.pdf

[RejZoR]

You have to look at it the other way around.
avast! doesn't have so called "heuristics", yet it scored 39/40%. Then look at AVG which does have a heuristics checkbox somewhere in the settings. 40/43%. Thats no real difference. It's even worse if you look at McAfee, Norman or VBA32. McAfee also has heuristics checkbox while Norman is hyped over its Sandbox "heuristic" technology, yet it scored far far worse than avast! ? Or F-Secure that also has heuristics.
If you draw the line here, you can see that fact alone that program states that it has heuristics and offers a checkbox or sensitivity slider somewhere in the interface means exactly nothing. On the other hand program can have proactive features (eg heuristics) and doesn't mention that anywhere or doesn't give users the control for it. It's just there and works all the time. And tthats the case for avast!.
They don't hype that, they don't advertise it and they don't mention it. It just works.
Sure, i agree they have to move on and upgrade all this and they will in version 5. But for now it is as it is. avast! 5 is coming this summer anyway so until then i wouldn't really bother myself with all this stuff around heuristics.