Battle Avast free vs Bitdefender free for newbies

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Dani Santos

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Avast free vs Bitdefender free for newbies about security. You can sugges other free products that are easy and protect well. Only antivirus.
 
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Nikos751

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Of cource Avast free, it is a feature complete solution while BD free is not, and it has more false positives.
It is the most used free AV, this means sth ;)
 
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samit

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in summary,
  • Resource Usage (eg: CPU, RAM) = Both of them uses less ram and cpu usage
  • Real World System Impact = Avast feels lighter than Bitdefender
  • User Friendliness = Bitdefender free
  • User Interface = Bitdefender free coz there is nothing to tweak one simple interface
  • Level of Protection and Features = Avast free has a lot more features than Bitdefender like hardened mode
  • Overall Winner = If you want better detection with false positive then Bitdefender is for you. If you want better prevention with good detection and less false positive then Avast is for you.
 
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WinXPert

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[QUOTE="Chromatinfish 123, post: 238549, member: 23007"Update: See below post. I know longer reccommend Bitdefender. +1 to Avast![/QUOTE]

Fanboy :p

+1 to Avast. As a proof, all PCs that I disinfected this year, I have replaced their AV with Avast.
 

Lailson

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In my opinion Avast because

Bitdefender as colleagues said, has many false positives, so for basic users or with limited knowledge can cause serious problems, the User may find it a malware, but it is an insurance program. Also have not had good experiences compatibility issues with Bitdefender and Windows 8.1. The interface of the free version also does not please me, one hand can be easy, but for me it is very bad, with virtually no customization option, for example I can not even run an update.
Based on the questions that you quoted: Avast has a good interface, super light on good computers or older, proactive defense much more than bitdefender free, a huge library of functions that can be useful, it is lightweight for receiving updates via streaming almost instantly. Avast is one of the largest databases of User and is consolidated in the market
Or you can use the 2 for a few days and choose what fits best, do not forget common sense :)
 
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avast! Protection

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There are 2 options for hardened mode.
Whats the difference between the 2 & which would be better for newbies without much probs?
If a program is excluded in hardened mode, is it excluded from AV realtime scan too or it will be scanned by the realtime AV?

@yesnoo, you may check my comment, explaining in details how the Hardened mode works - http://malwaretips.com/threads/why-avast-hardened-mode-is-faulty.28476/#post-219245

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! :)
 

shmu26

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the latest version of bitdefender free gets very good marks from the labs, better than avast, and it has support for quarantined files, allowing you to restore them and exclude them.
 

shmu26

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but there is a big qualification, which makes me vote for avast.
I will paste below what bitdefender support answered me:

Unfortunately we need to inform you that Free Edition needs constant internet connection to assure your device protection.As per your example, yes, if you connect an USB flash drive and you don't have internet connection you can get your PC infected.

We have taken in consideration your suggestion and we will address it to our development team in order to implement them in our future versions.
 
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D

Deleted member 2913

but there is a big qualification, which makes me vote for avast.
I will paste below what bitdefender support answered me:

Unfortunately we need to inform you that Free Edition needs constant internet connection to assure your device protection.As per your example, yes, if you connect an USB flash drive and you don't have internet connection you can get your PC infected.

We have taken in consideration your suggestion and we will address it to our development team in order to implement them in our future versions.
Its not that you are definitely going to get infected with USB attached.
Local cache & BB are there to protect you.
And its good to disable autoplay on your system.
 
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These links are old. Bd free initially had many probs. They must have fixed those. Latest version seems to run fine & gets fixes with regular updates mechanism.

I have used Bd free for quite a long time i.e the latest version.
Everything worked fine i.e no slow bootup, no system slowdown, no browsing slowdown (like their paid products), whatever harmless samples I tried it correctly quarantined & restored (not deleted instead of quarantine, initial versions use to delete some instead of quarantine but later they changed this to quarantine always), Active Virus Control detection too was correctly in quarantine & exclusion through quarantine too worked fine, etc...

The only probs I could mention-
Logs sometimes doesn't open. But Bd free restart or system restart always solves the probs. During my use, last couple months I didn't faced the logs prob.

WebShield could give occasional probs. Occasionally/rarely you would see couple features on a website not working. Disabling Realtime protection solves the prob. I never faced the prob but read on Bd free forum & tried the website & yes couple features were not working & disabling Realtime protection solved the issue. It was an occasional/rare prob & was fixed by Bd free Devs.

Sometimes Occasionally/rarely when you try to download something, the download window appears little late & download starts little late. Disabling Bd free, download window & download starts normal. I faced this prob.

So I could say that WebShield on some occasions/rarely could give a prob but as mentioned disabling Bd free solves the issue. And mentioning the prob on Bd free forum, Devs would solve the issue. I wish WebShield had a seperate enable/disable tab, that would be better.

But overall Bd free is an excellent product providing excellent protection especially for average users.
Theres a huge thread of Bd free on Wilders. Its more than 100 pages. And before installing Bd free I went through all the pages. I was impressed with all the info. There was a regular Bd staff who gave excellent infos on Bd free.

There are couple dangerous probs mentioned in Bd free forum. Like one user posted he attached external HDD that had thousands of files & Bd free quarantined all & now he couldn't restore them. Support was not much help.
No such thing happened on my 2 Win 7 64 laptops, external HDD, USB, etc...

Visit Bd free forum, go through the forum. If you think you should give a try to Bd free, give it a try. If not then there are other free AVs.
 
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nissimezra

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Can't restore deleted files.. so just came my mind. Scan your PC with Emsisoft Emergency Kit no detection then install BD Free. Is it OK then? What do you think?
you know when I see the reviews that people make and after that running Hitman pro to determent if the system is clean make me lough. why? BD engine has the most FPs in the market.

As for your answer;
user should have the choice or the ability to restored deleted files especially when it come to BD engine.

I did my part here you are all big boys you can do whatever you want. either way enjoy.

cheers
 
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shmu26

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Its not that you are definitely going to get infected with USB attached.
Local cache & BB are there to protect you.
And its good to disable autoplay on your system.
I tell you, Bitdefender free is an awful lot lighter on the system. I got tired of Avast slowing me down, and sometimes freezing the whole system when I clicked on file explorer (I am on an older PC with a Pentium dual core processor. Good enough for productivity, which is what I try to focus on!). So I went back to Bitdefender free. They are adding new functions regularly, it's not so bad as people think.
 
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jamescv7

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When we pertain for newbies then definitely go to the straightforward setup of Bitdefender Free, because of majority users are relying too much in the internet + AVC is pretty enough to take care against suspicious behavior.

Now Avast Free as a little mix of configuration that can be powerful for newbies like Hardened Mode then the rest is up to the preferences choices. Offline signatures isn't problem nowadays,
 
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JD15

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Avast free vs Bitdefender free for newbies about security. You can sugges other free products that are easy and protect well. Only antivirus.

Bitdefender free is a good Antivirus with absolute minimum features for those people that just want to install and forget. Avast is also a good Antivirus for those people who want a Antivirus with more features so they can customise to their preference.

Bitdefender free: Very light. Good detection file based and behaviour based. silently updated every hour. low false positives. minimum features.
Avast free: light. Good detection file based and behaviour based. updated regularly. not so low on false positives. maximum features.
 
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Rolo

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I just tested both of these two yesterday; BD free is abysmal, probably because it's still BD 2013.

Avast! (pretty much my baseline AV product) did nicely and it's pretty much the usual avast with some HIPS options added. Avast has many options to configure to set it how you want; if you crank it up, it will add noticeable overhead. I still like Qihoo better for superior detection rates and low performance overhead (I can't notice any performance drop and I can't break it like I did avast).
 
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I just tested both of these two yesterday; BD free is abysmal, probably because it's still BD 2013.

Avast! (pretty much my baseline AV product) did nicely and it's pretty much the usual avast with some HIPS options added. Avast has many options to configure to set it how you want; if you crank it up, it will add noticeable overhead. I still like Qihoo better for superior detection rates and low performance overhead (I can't notice any performance drop and I can't break it like I did avast).
Qihoo is FP prone. The thing is it detects system files & perfectly safe programs too as FPs. Sometimes its detection is not clear...like it gave me "Hosts Anomalies" & no other details. I suspected it meant something about Hosts files & guessed it meant about Unchecky software...guess Unchecky adds rules or something to Hosts files.
 

Rolo

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Qihoo does have it's share of FPs but they were actually understandable in my experience (obscure 13-year-old compressed executables that modify another program or a file system utility beta 1 day old). Unlike other products, it's FPs don't break processes.

Avast! on the other hand, yesterday accused multiple Windows 7 updates of being ransomware, so I'm really losing [more] faith in that product. I might be OK with that if it had top-tier detection rates, which it almost does (it's like, the best second-tier product).

But BD free vs Avast! free? Avast! hands down...especially with the pirate talk language enabled.
 
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Deleted member 2913

Rolo,

Qihoo didn't detected any system files or some perfectly safe popular program files on your system?

On my system it had detected Tally, 1 of my brothers simple excel work files & 2 detection I couldn't make out what were those.

I would like it to give another try.

You are an expert & running it. So I would like to ask you couple things that no one answered or know about on Wilder & here on MT.

I want to use 360 Total Security Essentials.
I want to use it with 360 protection features only i.e Avira & Bd disabled, what you say?
Guess Avira & Bd disabled there will be no offline protection, right?

And the most important thing, if you would help me in this then I could install it on my family systems too.
HIPS - 360 has HIPS features too. I want to use it as an AV, no HIPS features i.e dont want all those popups program is creating startup, modifying registry, etc.. For this I have to use custom protection but dont know what all to disable so that HIPS features are disabled i.e no popups that I mentioned above.
 
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