Avast virus scanner

[old Neil Parks]

Have recently been trying out the Avast virus scanner 4, freeware Home Edition. So far I'm impressed. Installation and setup are fairly easy.

It can be set to scan all incoming and outgoing email from/to any POP3/IMAP/SMTP host, using any email client. (Some clients can be set up automatically via a wizard. For others you can edit an INI file.)

It scans all applications on opening then. It can run a complete scan on your drive any time you want. It does so in the background, causing no slowdown of websurfing or anything else that you may be doing. After the first time you run a complete scan, you'll probably find that there are things you will need to add to the "exclusions" setting, such as Spybot's Recovery directory, for example.

If you use a download manager that can call a virus scanner, Avast has an "extension" that fits right in.

The new 4.1 which was just released yesterday adds some new features: Protection of files received via P2P, for example.

Virus database and program updates are a breeze to automate. You tell Avast whether you have a permanent connection or a dialup. If you have a dialup, the updater is smart enough to know whether or not you are online. If you are online it will search its hosts for new updates, and if you need one, it downloads it incrementally so that even via dialup it rarely takes more than a few seconds. (Even the program upgrade from 4 to 4.1 needed only six minutes to download on mine.)

Documentation has a few gaps, but FAQ pages and tech support forums on their site fill those gaps. (For example, that's how I found out that "ashQuick.exe" is the program to launch from my download manager.)

And all this is in the "Home Edition" which is free for noncommercial use. The "Professional Edition" adds a few bells and whistles (e.g. task scheduling and a "command line" app), but as far as I can see, nothing essential has been omitted from the free version.

Check it out at www.avast.com .

[willll]

Avast, ye scurvy dogs

[ehume]

Have you used AVG, from Grisoft? How do the two compare in virus coverage, OS slowdown?

[daihard]

And all this is in the "Home Edition" which is free for noncommercial use. The "Professional Edition" adds a few bells and whistles (e.g. task scheduling and a "command line" app), but as far as I can see, nothing essential has been omitted from the free version.

Check it out at www.avast.com .

I would love to try it, but they don't have a version for Linux...

[Radiowriter]

Avast, ye scurvy dogs

Make the landlubbers wark the plank!

[ehume]

Remember, Sept 19 is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr.

[Radiowriter]

Hear that, me hearties? Set sail for the Doc's "Talk like a Pirate" shindig and see if you can't get your timbers shivered!

[old Harry Waldron]

Neil - Thanks for sharing

I've heard of Avast as a free alternative but have never used it. It's always good to have free basic alternatives. Overall, it sounds like a good basic tool.

In my own testing, the free alternatives are not as elaborate or complete as NAV 2004 or McAfee's VS 8, but the price is right and it's far better to use these than have no protection at all.

[old Neil Parks]

Have you used AVG, from Grisoft? How do the two compare in virus coverage, OS slowdown?

I did try AVG, but personally didn't like it as much. I don't think it protects email unless you use Outlook. It does not do incremental updating. And it kept giving me false alarms when it scanned some old DOS apps that I wrote and compiled.

[dacovale]

have had avast since 3.0, when the only difference between the free version and its bigger brother was a remote-control feature.
I really like it. It has seen some real improvments over the time I've used it.
I still recommend it to friends who aren't protected.