Hi.
I am presently sojourning in the Avast environment as a visitor, having been a paid up Premium Avira user for some considerable time. (Indeed, I still have some months to go on my current Avira licence!)
I'm trying the free version of Avast because of some problems I was having with Avira, for which there seemed no cure.
So far I'm happy with Avast - everything is stable and running smoothly.
Some points to consider:
- with the free version of Avast, I have everything that I had with Avira Premium, plus even more paranoia-supporting "extras" to turn off. (I have more of Avast, Free, uninstalled or deactivated than I have installed or active! Hence, perhaps, the stability and smooth running);
- both Avast and Avira have a tendency to upgrade the program version without your permission, but Avira, as far as I know, didn't foist any extra whistles and bells on me without my conscious permission (such as automatic sandboxing);
- unlike Avast, Avira still supports older versions as far back as v.8, if such be necessary on your system (but you have to watch out for automatic upgrades that seem to happen when you least expect it);
- differences in performance (detection rates, etc) are not all that important, once you get into the better known makes: if you really are worried about, say, 96% vs 93% then you need counselling. (Especially as they jostle back and forth for first place with every new version.)
- neither scores better than the other on the support front: the language and terminology of the Help documentation is equally useless, but Avira is perhaps a little more inclined to tell you to uninstall anything that it won't work with, rather than solve the problem.
Recommendations and comparative reviews apart, the best antivirus (whatever) program is always going to be the one that works how you want it to, and not how it thinks you should be happy with, and with which you feel confident and familiar.
Cheers,
kb-r