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More…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).
Alwil Avast Antivirus Professional
| Renewal cost, per year | $28 (3/31/07) |
| Ease of use | Good |
| Malware detection rate: Malware detection tests used AV-Test.org's collection of 884,164 malware samples. | 92% |
| File viruses | 92% |
| Macro viruses | 99% |
| Script viruses | 87% |
| Polymorphic viruses | 88% |
| ActiveX controls | 100% |
| Back doors | 94% |
| Bots/zombies | 97% |
| Trojan horses | 88% |
| Adware | 89% |
| Dialers | 99% |
| Number of false positives (out of 20,000 harmless files) | 5 |
| Heuristic detection (one-month-old signatures) | 37% |
| Heuristic detection (two-month-old signatures) | 28% |
| Detection rate of malware within archived files | 44% |
| Detection rate of existing infections (10 infections) | 100% |
| Disinfection rate (files, Hosts changes, Registry items) | 77% |
| Average time (in hours) to deliver signatures for new malware | 6 to 8 |
| Right-click manual scans in Windows Explorer? | Yes |
| E-mail protocols scanned | POP3, IMAP, SMTP |
| Scan Web traffic? | Yes |
| Scan speed with standard settings, in seconds | 39 |
| With Firefox 2 | 11% |
| With Adobe Photoshop CS2 | 5% |
| With Microsoft Office 2003 | 4% |
| Daily support hours | 0 |
| Saturday support hours | 0 |
| Sunday support hours | 0 |
| Free phone support | No |
| Toll-free phone number | No |
| Cost of phone support | n/a |
| Live chat support? | No |
| E-mail support? | Yes |
Pros
Low performance impact
Cons
Poor proactive detection
Awkward advanced interface
Alwil Avast 4 Professional Edition
Avast Antivirus Professional Review, by Ryan Naraine April 23, 2007
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
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User Reviews
Average User Reviews for Alwil Avast Antivirus Professional
3 Reviews Add your own »
- Latest User Reviews 3 reviews
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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: 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.
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Reviewed by: LunyGameOn
Duration of ownership: 2 Years
Strengths: Works Great With All My Programs. I Never Had A Problem.
Weaknesses: None
Overall: 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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Reviewed by: jackbauer
Duration of ownership: 1 Year
Strengths: I have tried numerous antivirus products, but Avast is clearly superior. The easy to use interface and daily updates are a plus! Avast is easy on system resources, not like Norton or McAffee, which are resource hogs.
Weaknesses: No phone support in U.S.
Overall: Before I became an Avast advocate, I used Norton. I had a virus or trojan at least once a week. I can honestly say since switching to Avast, I have not had one. I receive alerts from e-mail, etc..., but my system has been virus free for almost a year now. It is so good picking up viruses, I only scan once a month now.
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