I see both sides of this. The BSOD point of view, and the ineffectiveness of MSE.
My argument is this, true you can have MSE and have system stability-until a virus comes along that MSE fails to detect and throws system instability out of the equation anyway.
OR
You could have a decent antivirus that actually catches the bad guys and does its main job. The best AV can only catch maybe 90% of malware. And thats on a good day. And that 10% is not 100's of threats, its millions. So you want to get something close that can actual sort of handle the job. So that is my reasoning.
True, avast is getting bloated, advertisements everywhere. Useless features that I am positive causes BSODS. And their most recently annoying introduction of grimefighter. (junk cleanware tool)
But avast is not the only option out there that's good. Their are paid and free suites that are fantastic. There is panda cloud antivirus which is free, light and offers no fancy bells or whistles. There is also bit defender free, which uses the same AV engine as their paid products.
On the other hand,
BSODS are bad, and can be a nuisance. Especially when a user is a novice and does not even know what a BSOD is. So that is bad too. And when you work in a BSOD forum, all your going to see is the negative side of the software, the software that is causing bsods. So its easy to quickly dismiss products as being bad and replacing them from something you have never seen cause a bsod-MSE. That thinking is Logical, but when it comes to PC security, its not a practical way to look at things.
I suggest that only geeks use MSE, as a normal user it would be very ineffective.
I have to say though, in all my time of fixing pcs and this and that, I have not seen a antivirus be the cause of the bsod. Normally it would point to it being the cause, but in reality it was factory bloatware or a old Remanent of mcafee (ICK) or notron (double ick) left on the system that did not fully uninstall, or was still installed.
Again though, every system is different, and there are more then a billion ways a computer can be configured. So one experience does not apply to everyone. Including BSOD issues
I'm sorry, I still don't see the point of using something that doesn't do a good job of what it is supposed just because it consistently does no harm.
I'm supporting this point of view.
I couldn't agree more.
To sum up, as for the bickering of which AV is better: Only you and your system know. But it doesn't hurt to look at the results of labs-(or be your own lab and do tests on your own) and decide if what you have is really worth keeping and if its doing its job. Support the smaller av companies who are keeping their product clean and fast-focusing on protection, and not the big guys who focus more on features then protection.
My 2 cents.
