TSGL: AVG Free AV vs. Avast AV ???

[Computerfee]

Hi there Lee,

can't help you with the plug-in for AVG but here are just some thoughts
about not needing e-mail virus scans at all - maybe this article is 
interesting for you as well -
http://www.thundercloud.net/infoave/answers/2007/no-email-scan-with-av.htm
I don't rely much on the thundercloud answers, but think some of their
articles are quite interesting as they show a different point of view and
obviously they are objective as they don't want to sell anything but give
away their stationery for free (they also have a really informative article
about IncrediMail by the way which I am passing around quite often when
people start strange problems with their computers -
http://thundercloud.net/infoave/answers/incredimail.htm)

have a nice day
Heidi from Berlin, Germany


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lee Bunyard" <leebunyard at comcast.net>
To: "Tech Support Guy Mailing List" <list at tsgserver.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 12:06 AM
Subject: TSGL: AVG Free AV vs. Avast AV ???


> I've been using the AVG Free anti-virus program for a number of years
> now on a number of different pc's and have been very happy with it.
> Have never had a virus infection on any of the pc's.  Lately I've been
> running the AVG Free AV product on a desktop and laptop.   I use the
> Mozilla Thunderbird email client and on both my desktop and laptop, the
> AVG 7.5 Free program provides a "Personal Email Scanner" module that
> scans the incoming and outgoing Thunderbird email.  It also scans email
> for the IncrediMail email client which my wife uses.  When scanning, AVP
> pops up a little box pops indicating that it is scanning email.  My
> desktop went south several weeks ago and I purchased a new HP desktop
> that runs Vista Premium Home edition OS.  Once I managed to get rid of
> the annoying Norton AV product popups that the new MS computers come
> preloaded with, I decided to download and use AVG Free AV on the new
> desktop.  After going thru the frustration of trying to find the free
> version of AVG on the www.grisoft.com website (they do everything they
> can to direct you into one of their paid products), I finally found the
> download site for the AVG Free version and downloaded the v7.5 product.
> It installed OK and works fine EXCEPT that, while the email scanner
> shows that it is functioning, it is definitely NOT scanning the
> Thunderbird email.  When I check the AVG settings and properties for the
> email scanner, it shows that the plugin it is using is for MS Outlook
> Extension.  In other words, there is no plugin showing for Personal
> Email Scanner, which apparently is needed to scan email other than MS
> Outlook.  The HELP files for AVG indicate that I need to checkmark the
> Personal Email Scanner in order to scan email other than Outlook but
> there is no Personal Email Scanner there.  I've downloaded and installed
> the AVG Free v7.5 product three times now trying to figure out what's
> wrong but I get the same thing each time.  I just went and checked the
> AVG Free product on my laptop and it is running the same v7.5 of AVG and
> it does show that the Personal Email Scanner is in place and working.
> The laptop is running XP Home OS.
> Anyone running AVG Free experience anything similar to this problem, or
> have any thoughts on why I can't get the Personal Email Scanner plugin
> to setup during installation???
>
> Second issue.  Last nite, in frustration with the AVG Free installation,
> I went out and downloaded the Avast Free AV product.  It setup and
> installed OK and is running and apparently working OK, including
> scanning incoming and outgoing Thunderbird email but it appears to have
> DRAMATICALLY slowed down my new desktop pc.  Particularly on bringing up
> graphics in webpages using the Firefox browser (my preferred browser).
> Is this slowdown normal when running the Avast AV product??  If so, I
> probably won't continue to use it.  There are 7 scanning modules with
> Avast AV--Internet Mail, Network Shield, P2P Shield, Standard Shield,
> Web Shield, Instant Messaging and Outlook/Exchange.  I turned off the
> modules for Instant Messaging and Outlook/Exchange since we don't need
> those functions but the pc performance with Avast is still much slower
> than I ever experienced with AVG Free.  I'm not sure whether I can
> safely turn off any of the other modules since I'm not really sure what
> their function is.  Any thoughts from anyone who is using the Avast Free
> AV product??
>
> Thanks for any thoughts on these problems.
> Lee in the Mountains of Northern California
> _______________________________________________
> Tech Support Guy Mailing List
> http://www.tsgserver.com/list/