So to speak, in the last year, thousands of Avira users were driven to Avast! and Avira alone was responsible for it. Even now we have posts in Avira's Support Forum that many are switching to Avast as they say it is far more superior to Avira. The main reasons are that the Version 9 of Avira AntiVir has been very buggy(don't ask me about them!) and the update issues are far worse. It gets on your head when you can't update your Virus Defintion for a week and all they have to say is "Busy servers. Because Avira is used by tons of people." Lame excuse in my opinion because Avast! has as many users as Avira and we never never complain of faulty updates in Avast! The main reason is Avira is bent down upon promoting their Premium and Security Suites. They repeatedly are avoiding our requests in the Forum to add some new modules. Avira 10 is due out by the end of March and I would guess that they would not want to make their free antivirus suite a joke like Comodo Internet Secuity's Antivirus! I had switched from Avira to try out VIPRE Antivirus+Antispyware(excellent product it is!) but I was facinated by Avast! 5 Modules and new Interface. Now I am much satisfied with Avast! 5. But all that I can say is that if Avira works for you then it can give your very decent protection(Not like Avast! perhaps but it will be good) I personally had no update problems, but I was very annoyed by the no. of false positives they had to offer and the constant freezing of Luke Filewalker(The name of Avira's scan-engine, the freezing is a common bug from Version 9 onwards) made me crazy. Hope Avira will improve in future.