Switched to ‘avast’ antivirus

Made a switch from Norton antivirus to Avast antivirus today. Norton was taking too much of resources. Clearly a bloatware. Wanted to switch for sometime now, but somehow it did not happen till now. Ok. Avast is from a company called Alwil software, and is pretty decent. Its free for home/personal use.

I had used avast antivirus for sometime a year ago. I had switched back to Norton antivirus to try out a new version of Norton antivirus - 2005, which was a nightmare. It made my 1.5GHz processor behave like a 400 MHz processor. So, again switched back to Norton 2003.

The latest version of avast is quite impressive. It managed to detect some adwares present in my memory on the first run. Norton antivirus never detected this adware!.

I also did a full system scan, and found that there were some Trojans too which were on my system. Clearly bypassing Norton antivirus.

Avast antivirus is quite responsive, fast. It auto updates its antivirus signatures. Apart from the standard in-memory scanner, it has modules to take care of p2p applications, IM’s, network access etc.

I have been running it for a while, and the performance of the system is pretty good.

More details/features available at the avast site.

6 comments | July 21st, 2005 at 12:08am

It isn’t spyware anymore!!

This is kind of insane. A recent spyware report from Webroot Software Inc. lists Claria’s software as the second most prolific adware install, appearing on more than 2 percent of consumer desktops. Webroot also counts Claria’s GAIN application as the second biggest threat to desktop computers.

And…………..Microsoft buys Claria (to fight spyware with spyware????.. .. god only knows!)

And worse, Microsoft Windows anti-spyware application has now downgraded Claria’s Gator detections and changed the recommended action from ‘quarantine’ to ‘ignore.’ !!.

Now, What message is Microsoft giving the community ?….
…. since its now owned by Microsoft ignore the GAIN application even its a spyware …. what the heck, there are too many such things in Windows itself which are worse when compared to GAIN!

1 comment | July 8th, 2005 at 05:41pm