Originally Posted by ToshMcCaber
1) I was rather surprised to find that a free version would be less effective than a paying one- what's the point in putting one's reliance on an AV programme, if it ain't as near as dammit 100%?
But why on earth would a manufacturer give away all the features for nothing? They'd be out of business in weeks. Or days. And leave a huge userbase with a great program that was rapidly becoming useless.
The trick is finding a free one that will do the job, in conjunction with other methods (browser hardening, immunizing, firewall, backups/imaging etc.) As far as I am concerned,
none of them are "as near as dammit %100", nor can they be. The bad guys release the malware before the AV companies see it, analyse it, and release def's for it. They are reactive. That is the fact of life with any blacklist-based scanner.
Avast offers at least as good protection from a variety of different pests as any of them, free or paid. That's part of the point I was making in the post above.
Most of the other free versions have the important stuff throttled. Avast doesn't.
Any of them will let one through, the wrong one, on the wrong day. I've seen it with AVG. With Norton. With McAfee. And with Avast. And a whole heap more. (I browse far too many malware logs on various forums.
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If you really want to get into serious protection, get yourself a HIPS. (White-list based blocker. Requires a fair amount of knowledge and interaction.)
Feature comparisons, free/paid:
Avast Avira AVG.
2) Does AVG Free also scan in real-time, other than scheduled scanning?
Yes. That's the definition of "resident", "realtime", or "on access" scanning.
The other type is called a demand scanner. Which include such gems as Clam, and DrWeb Cureit. And a whole bevy of antispyware programs such as Spybot, MBAM, SAS etc.