These days, the antivirus market is replete with all sorts of offers. So here is a comparative analysis of the paid and free versions of the antivirus – Norton Internet Security 2012 and Avast Free Antivirus 7.0.
Norton Internet Security
According to the developers, Norton Internet Security 2012 is equipped with even better protection than its predecessor series. Now every download of a file from the Internet this minute is accompanied by a check for harmful infections. In addition to the huge virus database, NIS 2012 provides many other ways to recognize attacks on your system.
If you work with important information on your computer (everyone has it), there is a certain chance that you will be noticed and attacked by hackers. Norton is designed to protect your emails and received messages (in Skype or ICQ) from all types and generations of viruses, infected attachments, and other network threats. With Norton Internet Security 2012, you can safely browse banking and online shopping websites.
Search engine lovers can relax: even when entering a query, Norton “selects” links to malicious sites, leaving only safe search results. The nice ability of NIS 2012, however, there is no guarantee that the antivirus will not delete a site with very useful information for you simply because of its “suspicion”.
Avast Free Antivirus
Avast Software’s antivirus solutions are among the most widely used in the world. Today, nearly 165 million people have installed Avast! Antiviruses on their machines. This is the official (and proud, say) statistics. One of the reasons for such popularity and prevalence is that this antivirus package is free.
Avast! Free Antivirus 7 brought even more novelties: a redesigned interface (more contrasting colors and smoother transitions), a cloud protection function, remote assistance, enhanced automatic sandboxing functionality, and website reputation services. From all of the above, perhaps it is worth dwelling on “cloud technologies”.
They first appeared in the seventh version of Avast! Free Antivirus and are responsible for two functions – file reputation check and streaming update. When a suspicious file is found, the antivirus sends a request to the “cloud” and finds out its reputation. This allows you to decide the danger of a particular file. With streaming updates, you can receive critical updates dynamically, which will significantly improve the speed of the antivirus “reaction” to new threats. In simple words, without loud epithets like “Cloud technology”, this is a more convenient function for the end-user to deeply check a suspicious file for malicious code. Many antiviruses have implemented the function of uploading suspicious files to the program developer’s server for the in-depth analysis, only earlier this was done through a website on the Internet, now it is possible from the program interface.
Conclusion
Norton Internet Security 2012 surpasses free Avast! In terms of its capabilities: checking private messages, the function of protecting against children, and “nasty” hackers can be indispensable. On the other hand, Avast is reliable, the program monitors network threats, and the sandbox mode allows us to reflect on the fate of suspicious sites.