Which is Better Avast or Zone Antivirus

[ofield1]

Hello,
I was wondering in your opinion which is a better Anti-Virus Program
Avast Home Edition or Zone Alarm.

I am Currently using Zone Alarm,but I just saw on cnet download where
Avast got 5 stars from the editor and 4.5 from User's.

I need your opinion, I just switched to Broadband and need a good free
firewall.
Thanks.

[daamon]

I was wondering in your opinion which is a better Anti-Virus Program
Avast Home Edition or Zone Alarm.

No-one can give you an answer: Avast is anti-virus software and Zone Alarm is a firewall. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

I am Currently using Zone Alarm,but I just saw on cnet download where
Avast got 5 stars from the editor and 4.5 from User's.

I need your opinion, I just switched to Broadband and need a good free
firewall.

And now you're asking for a good free firewall when you started out by asking about a good anti-virus program. Which do you want? Either? Both?

I run AVG Free Anti-Virus and Zone-Alarm firewall and they do a great job. Avast anti-virus is also highly rated - probably just as good as AVG, they're both highly popular.

You'll also do well to get a good anti-spyware program - I use CA Pest Patrol, but Spybot Search & Destroy is free and good.

[guns1inger]

I was a big zone alarm fan for many years until it became too resource hungry and started to interact badly with other software. I have tried it again a few times over the years in the hope that it would have improved, but the experiences have all been uniformly bad. I can't image how much more of a system burden it would be with a built in anti-virus program cobbled onto the side of it.

If you are looking to pay for an anti-virus tool, I would strongly suggest you look at Nod32 or Kaspersky. Both are very highly rated and light on system resource usage.

If you are happy with Zone Alarm as your firewall, and it works for you, then keep on using it. If you are looking for a change, I would suggest you look at Comodo.

[hech54]

Avast for me too....it's unbeatable for me and the Mrs.
The Mrs. recently asked me to switch her laptop from her
beloved Norton to Avast...and she couldn't be happier with it.
Another die-hard Norton fan makes the switch...

[ofield1]

Thanks everyone for your help.

[Marvingj]

Bitdefender is also very good...

[serega]

No-one can give you an answer: Avast is anti-virus software and Zone Alarm is a firewall. It's like comparing apples and oranges

Zone Alarm has Antivirus option (have to buy). I have ZA internet security wich also has spyware protection. I don't think ZA uses as much resources as Norton or McAfee.

[jman98]

I use and like Zone Alarm for firewalls. I have not had the problems guns1inger has had, but I would agree with him that a combo firewall/anti-virus tool from them might not be the best choice. I use AVG (http://www.grisoft.com) for free anti-virus, but I will warn you that they deliberately make it devilishly hard to find their free anti-virus program on their website.

I used Zone Alarm because several years ago there was some kind of hack that they were just about the only firewall that correctly protected against at the time. I have continued to use them since then.

[bytre]

I went back to Norton after a tour of a couple freebies. The commodity ones do fine for the bulk of the threats, but they can't handle the rootkits which are becoming more common. norton cleaned them up.

[TBoneit]

jman98, if you go to free.grisoft.com avg free is very easy to find.

I installed the AVG Internet Security 8 recently as a free upgrade to AVG IS 7.5 and I like it FWIW. When I go to google the security features rate the websites with a icon in google as to whether or not they are safe. It does have a free trial to test. It is payware. I don't know how it rates as it is a pretty new version.

I spend my days here at work clearing Viruses and other malware from customers computers whatever you use keep it up to date, use the latest version and be careful where you go on the web, Turn off the preview pane in Outlook Express and outlook. Turn on show file extensions.

Good Luck

Edit here is what the AVG IS 8 shows in Google for a bad site. All I searched by was AVG 8 fwiw.



Notice it isn't perfect it shows the site above this one as OK, Where it most likely isn't.

[daamon]

I use AVG (http://www.grisoft.com) for free anti-virus, but I will warn you that they deliberately make it devilishly hard to find their free anti-virus program on their website.

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?tag=lst-2

or, amazingly, they have a "Search" function on their homepage:

Search for: AVG free -> Select the top-most link / search result -> Click "Learn more" underneath "AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition" -> Click "Download basic protection"

Devilishly easy...

[guns1inger]

Spyware and computer virii are like STDs. The best protection is not to indulge in risky behaviour in the first place. Yes, there are drive-by infections out there, but you need to be driving through some pretty seedy neighbourhoods to get them. Don't go to websites you don't know and have no recommendation for, don't install anything you don't know about, don't uses P2P networks like limewire etc., don't open suspicious attachments, and your risk drops to single digit %s. The chances of getting a root accidentally drop to 0 if you don't use Sony products. Anything else is self-inflicted.

Yes, you should protect yourself. But you don't need to spend a lot of money, or bog your system down with bloated all-in-one security packages to do it. I was, for a very long time, a Norton fan and user. But after the past few versions, I would not touch it with a barge pole. Same goes for Trend (bloat) and McAfee (double bloat)

[TBoneit]

guns1inger, I Agree on being careful. Unfortunately if you suffer from Dyslexia or are just a poor typist you can end up on some dodgy websites by mistake.

I accidently ended up on a adult material website by mistake. What happened, I was going to the Whitehouse website. www.whitehouse.gov and types from habit. How many kids doing research for school ended up there by mistake? I don't know, However I would guess lots.

I was looking for drivers for Soundblaster sound card. I mistyped www.soundblaster.com by leaving out the l and ended up om one of those websites that just keeps popping up new pages as fast as you can close them.

Some examples of of easy to mistype sites from
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects/domain-names/resources/resources.html

Please Note: These page may be p*rnographic in nature. View at your own risk

www.whitehouse.gov vs. www.whitehouse.com
www.yahoo.com vs. www.yahhoo.com
www.yahoo.com vs. www.yahooo.com
www.yahoo.com vs. www.yahoooo.com
www.yahoo.com vs. www.yahooooo.com
www.excite.com vs. www.excit.com
www.hotbot.com vs. www.hotbott.com
www.lycos.com vs. www.lycoss.com
www.altavista.digital.com vs. www.altavist.com
www.altavista.digital.com vs. www.altavista.com

As these examples of sites show the bad guys like to camp out around popular sites.

So Yes, Be carefull, be skeptical, Be protected.

[Ai Haibara]

I've seen even legitimate sites, such as those used by newspapers, end up serving malware to people - someone hijacks an ad or the ad server, and the site then runs ads that install spyware/viruses/etc. Or, they'll just outright hack the legitimate site, and who knows what the resulting pages will do?

[TBoneit]

That's why I'm liking the AVG IS8 in the search engine it seems to be scanning the pages before giving the ratings. The little symbols whirl around and give the icons for each link over a short period.

As much use as I give the search engines here at work I like having a rating on the sites.
Note: I never tried McAfee's site advisor software so I can't compare the two. But there sure does seem to be more and more Malware out there.

[SCDVD]

A general comment regarding most anti malware products. When a warning pops up regarding a suspicious action by a software module, you should be careful; you can be wrong by either accepting or denying the action. If you get lazy and accept something that is malware, the problem it can cause speaks for itself. Unfortunately, you can't just deny everything or you will wind up disabling programs and preventing needed updates etc. So if you allow everything, you are likely to wind up with an infected computer. If you deny everything, you will wind up with a very sick computer with programs that don't run, printers that don't print, software like Java, Firefos, Flash, PDF reader and many others that are outdated. (A specific example - Many of the Firefox updates are security related; that is, the updates improve security and reduce vulnerability to malware. If you deny these updates, you are at greater risk to malware. This is true with many other programs as well.) It is a good idea to verify what the module is that the warning is about before allowing or denying it. One way to do this is to note the module name in the warning box and BEFORE getting mouse-happy and clicking away, open a browser window and Google the term so you will know what it is.

[TimA-C]

The ZoneAlarm Security Suite is slightly cheaper than Norton Internet Security or Norton 360 (considerably cheaper if you want it for more than 1 machine as you get 3 licenses!). They both come with decent firewalls, antivirus, anti-spyware etc., spam filter and parental control but a lot of these features are either turned off or toned down by default in Norton. (that's why you don't get many pop-ups as you do in ZoneAlarm or Comodo!) In Norton 2007 the spam filter and parental control were in a separate download so many people didn't have them installed 'cos they didn't know about them. (Don't know if this is still true with Norton 2008) Plus Norton make it so difficult to get to the advanced settings that after many, many years I gave up on Norton.

ZoneAlarm has had it's problems over the last few months but it's gotten a lot better recently. Zone Alarm doesn't play nicely with bit torrents so give it a wide berth if you do!

I haven't used Avast for a while but it was one of the few security suites that would work on the 64-bit version of Windows XP Pro so I'm guessing it would be 64-bit Vista compatible by now.

[guns1inger]

The parental control filter in Norton's uses a huge amount of memory (about 4 - 5 times the rest of the suite put together) and in the last version I used (Norton 360) it could not be applied on a per account basis. It was either on for all users, or off for all users. Keep this in mind if you have a family machine and need different levels of protection for each user.

I use

Firewall : Comodo Pro 3
Anti-Virus : AVG Free 7.5 (does avast! still have 20 separate agents installed as services, or is it more centralised now ?)
Anti-spyware : Spyware Blaster 4 and Spybot 1.5.x
Parental Filter : Crawler Parental Control

I do a lot of web crawling and trialling of software, and nothing is on my system that shouldn't be.

However no software is a substitute for vigilance and common sense. If you think software alone will protect you, you are in a for an unhappy time.

[Gregg]

I have ZA SS on my PC from a very long time and have never had any problems. It has an antivirus and antispyware options built in. The antivirus core is a Kaspersky one.

[Johnson Nguyen]

I use to be an AVG user but egh, it wasn't for me. It started trying to take control over my computer and all it's resources. I switched to Avast recently and it does a splendid job. I just like it how when I start up my computer the computer says, "Virus Data Base has been updated." Isn't that great?! In terms of firewall, I haven't used Zone Alarm but I hear it's highly recommended from moderators I trust.

[TBoneit]

The question I have is are they talking about ZA firewall only version or ZA + AV?

I do not recall those threads. The problem with ZA and TMPGEnc is that often the messages just post Zonealarm or TMPGEnc and don't clarify which one.

[DereX888]

Perhaps set up your router properly and you may not need any software firewall to double that job on each machine?


As for antivirus I suggest NOD32 - for many years it is hands down best antivirus out there. Remember, even ONE virus is already enough to kill your Windows OS, so having antivirus that may let thru "just few" viruses is like playing russian roulette.
I think this little chart says it all:

Clearly NOD32 is still the only antivirus prog out there that haven't skipped/missed any single known virus since 1998, compare it with others in the same time (specially have a look at AVG LOL and yeah, to those who use AVG: since AVG managed to miss 745 known viruses - that's almost one missed virus every month! - obviously you'll *think* your system is clean because AVG won't warn you about something it doesn't know itself... )
Again, antivirus is like sex with prostitute: either you wear best protection, or you don't care

IMHO there's no discussion. Its either NOD32 or switching to linux... just 2 choices


/edit/ F-PROT is not in this chart, possibly it was deliberately omitted because it is Eset's worst nemesis F-Prot ought to be #2 in this chart instead of Symantec, because years ago it 'slipped' on a handful of viruses in on-access tests, but still have same 0 misses in on-demand tests IIRC

GET ESET NOD32 TRIAL HERE
DOWNLOAD F-PROT TRIAL HERE