AVG, Avira or Avast?

I'm trying to decide which AV to run on my system - 32 bit system with Vista home premium. At the moment I'm running AVG 9.0.725 with Comodo firewall, spybot and spywareblaster. In an attempt to repair my father in law's spyware riddled pc, I installed AVG free on his older XP machine, but noticed that occasonally after bootup Firefox would be unable to connect to the internet wiht the error message "firefox can't find the server at search.avg.com", given the state of his machine I didn't pay too much attention to this.

However, this morning when I turned on my pc I got the same message. A quick search on google hasn't helped much, and since the website it should have been opening was google and not AVG (I may just be showing my ignorance of how browsers function) I figure it might be AVG that's giving me the problem.

I've done a little research to try to find the best out of AVG Avast and Avira, but the best thread on majorgeeks is a year out of date and to be honest I don't really trust the opinions elsewhere who champion Norton, Kaspersky etc...

Soo, since AVG is now on version 9, can it compare to the other 2 or is the problem I mention above just the tip of the iceberg with AVG problems to come and should I just flip a coin and take Avira or Avast?

(sorry its a bit long winded)

 

Thanks dr.m, I have installed avira on (same father in law's) laptop and I liked the look of it, but I have read somewhere that it is quite resource hungry (I suppose this probably isn't so much of an issue with this system) and that there are problems with its updates compared to Avast... I do feel that Avast or Avira would be better than AVG and the problem I mentioned below does seem to confirm my suspicions.

 

I've used Avast! for years with no problems. It really boils down to personal preference. Try all of them for a week or two each and see which one you like better. They are all top notch and effective.

 

Avira resource hungry?(post 3)
Not compared to AVG.

 

I have used AVG since i found it on version 7 and have been using it ever since. I got your problem when i had version 8.5 but not since ive upgraded to 9.XX

I used Avast! once and when i installed it, my pc REALLY didn't like it. For some reason some of my programs stopped working, my pc slowed way down, and i got all sorts of error messages i had never had before or since using it. (have no idea why i know tons of friends who love and use this)

never used Kaperski but a few of my friends who use it swear you wont ever find a better antivirus program.

Never tried Avira

Im actually a bit scared to try new antivirus since the problem i had with Avast!, plus im one of those --if it aint broke and im not having virus' all over my HDD why would i even bother switching---kinds of ppl.

so my setup is AVG, Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware and Spybot.

 

I agree with the slim, or custom, installation of AVG. I use that on most machines I work on and have had good luck.
Even so, the most important thing is what the user is downloading. I just cleaned a machine that had up to date Mcaffee, yet was full of spyware and a couple of trojans, all as a result of user permitted downloads.
I tell my students, (senior Citizens), only download from MS or MG, if you follow this, you will not get infected.:wave