Avast 6!(free) vs. Panda Cloud

[martin061399]

Ok, so I started this thread because I can't clear up my mind whether what to choose. Kindly state your answer and elaborate. Thank you.

[techgeek88]

As I said in your other thread - both are great choices. Allow me to elaborate my thoughts on why I prefer a "simple" setup for a free AV and therefore give the nod to Panda.

I'm the kind of guy that cannot be bothered with popups and slowdowns. I do not like layered security. I either want to run a Free AV or a pay-for IS suite and be done with it. Speed is very important to me. If a computer is slow - I will not use it, plain and simple. For me I'd rather have a faster PC and basic security than a slower PC that is tough as nails. I'm all about speed. I do CCleaner, Registry Cleaner, and Defrag once every couple days because even the lightest slowdown wigs me out like something you couldn't imagine. I'm a stickler for having a super fast computer and when you run a heavy program LET ALONE a whole bunch of them, system speed goes down dramatically.

I prefer Panda because it's simple, has very high detection rates, and is never nagging me. Now I am a Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 guy for my own machine and it's very lightweight and is nice and that's what I use on my main machine but on my other machines and my clients and family - all of them use Panda Cloud. It's just something I don't even have to think about. I've never seen someone get infected with Panda. I unfortunately have with Avast. I'm not saying it can't happen with Panda, but I have had 0 problems to date. Don't get me wrong - Avast is a great free antivirus and certainly better than AVG, Avira, MSE, etc but it has two big downfalls. One is resource usage and the other is popups.

[googoo1876]

If you have a reasonably good computer as in 2 GB ram+ I would use Avast. Otherwise use Panda Cloud.

[DBone]

Wow, avast! free and pop-ups?? I have never seen a pop-up in avast! unless it was a warning that an infection was prevented/detected. Also, avast! is lighter on system resources then PCA, especially in terms of disk I/0.

[techgeek88]

A lot of popups stem from the behavior shield. As far as Avast being lighter than Panda Cloud - not in my experience. I'm more concerned about RAM usage than disk usage as RAM usage is where slowdowns occur. When I ran Avast it was running in the 10mb range, Panda was 4-7. My PC has plenty of RAM (4GB) but I still feel a slowdown with most AV's and certainly with layered security. Speed is very important and because I do know how to stay pretty much uninfected, I stick with basic products. Of course my main machine runs KIS, but all of my other machines run Panda. It seems to work well for my clients also.