Sunday, June 29, 2008

Avast anti-virus software program for home PC

I was using AVG anti-virus software up until recently, when they did a major upgrade. Their new software slowed down my computer considerably, and it seemed to be causing browser crashes. This lead to a search for an alternative free-for-personal-use anti-virus program. The one I settled on is called "Avast". I believe I read it has 50 million users world-wide. I've been using it for the past month or so, and have found it to be problem-free. Here's a review from C-Net, where it got high marks from both reviewers and users:

Avast Home Edition 4.8.1201.80611
Avast Home Edition is a complete ICSA & Checkmark certified antivirus, Checkmark certified anti-spyware & anti-rootkit package. Avast includes the following components: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, just select what do you want to scan in which way and press the Play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging--ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic--intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield--monitors and filter all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner--scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner--scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.

Version 4.8.1201.80611 contains improvements in spyware and rootkit detection.

Follow the link for user comments and download link. Here's another review from Softpedia:

avast! 4 Home Edition 4.8.1201

Here is the link for the download page on the Avast Website is here:

avast! 4 Home Edition - FREE antivirus software - Download.

The software is free to use for non-commercial use by home users. There is a 60 day trial period before you have to register it. Registration is free, and easy to do. You have to re-register it once a year. I have it set to scan once a day, and it does updates automatically. So far, I'm quite happy with it.
     

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