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Alwil Avast Antivirus Professional

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Pros
Low performance impact
Cons
Poor proactive detection
Awkward advanced interface

Alwil Avast Antivirus Professional Review

by Ryan Naraine

This program offers decent overall malware detection, but poor proactive protection and an awkward design. It also lacks U.S. phone support.

Alwil Software's Avast 4 Professional Edition came in with a disappointing sixth-place finish in "Virus Stoppers," our eight-program antivirus roundup, despite a decent 92 percent success rate at detecting malware (compared to 96 percent for top performers).

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Its ranking was hurt by its poor performance in our proactive tests: Avast caught only 37 percent of new malware using one-month-old signature files, the second-worst showing. For disinfection, its performance was about average. It cleaned all infected files, but missed changes to the Hosts network settings file and some less-important Registry entries, catching 78 percent of all possible items.

The program installed smoothly, with appropriate default settings for the average person. It offers two interface options: One is a distinct, media player-type control panel that makes it easy to figure out how to launch a scan or set a manual boot-time scan; a second "enhanced interface" lets you access and fine-tune more settings, but it's not nearly as user-friendly as the other option.

After installation, Avast runs one full-system startup scan. But in the awkward advanced interface, we could not find a place to set up a regularly scheduled scan. The only option we could find enables scans whenever the screen saver is running, but even this setting was difficult to locate. And Alwil Software does not offer phone support in the United States.

Avast scans a good range of e-mail and news protocols, including POP3, SMTP, IMAP, and NNTP. It also scans all Web traffic. And Avast's comprehensive instant messaging protection fully supports several popular IM clients--AIM, ICQ, MSN, Skype, Trillian, and Yahoo Messenger--as well as lesser-known chat tools such as Gaim, Miranda, and Pal Talk Messenger.

Avast maintains a useful, built-in Virus Recovery Database on your PC, which you can theoretically use to repair infected program (.exe) files. (We didn't test this functionality.)

This paid Professional version costs $40, with a $28 yearly renewal fee. Alwil Software also offers a free Home version, which lacks some features such as the ability to run scheduled scans and view previous scan results.

We tested the Vista version of Avast 4 Professional Edition for our "Virus Stoppers" roundup. An XP version of the software is also available.

Ryan Naraine

User Reviews for Alwil Avast Antivirus Professional

Reviewed by: castahl98

Duration of ownership: 3 Years

Strengths: It has a very low resources requirement Consistent updates to the virus database and program. Skin-able interface. FREE TO THE HOME USER!!!!!!!!!

Weaknesses: The default skin at first glance may be confusing.

Overall Evaluation: This is a first class product that is being offered free to the home user. I has been very effective in keeping my PC's clean of viruses for three years. They might me a little slower than other companies in getting the newest fixes out (1 or 2 days) but this is just fine for the average home user. It has exceptionally low system requirements. On my old Compaq laptop (P3 650mhz with 256 RAM running Win98) it uses on 8% of the resources. All of the other programs I have tried use up to 40% of the resources. On my newer HP desktop is uses less than 1% of the available resources. It is also offers the ability to change skins (user interfaces) until you find one that you can understand and follow. I personally use the "Petite Blue" skin. This is by far the best deal for the home user on the market. FREE professional level virus protection.
Reviewed by: LunyGameOn

Duration of ownership: 2 Years

Strengths: Works Great With All My Programs. I Never Had A Problem.

Weaknesses: None

Overall Evaluation: If you need a viurs free computer get Avast. It run's fast it scans when you have a screensaver. It watchs everything you do from downloading and lookin at websites and e-mails. I give this a 5/5 I used to use Norton but got many problems over time viurs, run's slow and sometimes takes over your computer. So get Avast if you need a program, works right out of the box.

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