both offer the same level of protection , but AVG has still not learned from their former mistakes regarding the toolbar and securesearch. if you take a look at their support forums , customers are still complaining about their hompage being " hijacked " and the toolbar is forced on them. other than that internet securtiy ran smooth on my computer , without any hesitation. despite all of this I am not longer a hall of famer , because other than " forcing " the toolbar and secure search the company uses scaretactics : when running a 1 time free scan with tuneup the user is presented with an astronomical amount of registry errors and other false positives in order to make a buck. this is why my vote does not go to AVG , have not tried avast in a long time , so I cannot vote on them too.