Earth said:
Avast isn't as "light" as they claim to be, for me Avira Free and ESET NOD32/SS are lighter.
PS: By light I mean, system impact on performance.
Every system is different, however on most systems that I have tried all of the above AV's, Avira was the lightest.
I love Avast, but in some cases I do agree Avira and Eset Nod32 are lighter. But there are other systems where Avast runs the lightest.
But after AV's learn your files, the only time they will usually stall for a few seconds is when new files get added or when your browser's cache has new files in the temp folders that haven't been previously scanned.
You can disable web protection if it becomes a problem, your basic file scanner should still detect files if they are downloaded.
Sometimes Avast will pause Windows Explorer for a few seconds when opening a folder with a lot of exe files. I notice that it usually don't happen unless I download new files in that folder.
Sometimes Avast is slow at opening Windows Explorer for new removable devices. Of coarse not it isn't a problem for me that I can't deal with.
It all depends on how many files is on your system and in Windows folders, how fast the response time will be. Almost all AV's will run fast on an empty system, it is when you start adding things is what makes them run slower because they have more work to do then.
Thanks.
