Avast Free Antivirus Review Discussion

By Charles P. Jefferies

ALWIL Software's Avast Antivirus Home Edition is free for home users. How does it stack up against other free and paid solutions? We break it down in this review.

Read the full content of this Article: Avast Free Antivirus Review

Related Articles:

• Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 Review
• AVG 9.0 Anti-Virus Free Review
• Microsoft Security Essentials Review
• Symantec Norton Antivirus 2010 Review
• 2009 Antivirus Software Home Buyers Guide

 

Wait, this is better than Avira?

Great review Chaz, I am thinking to change to this one.

 

is it better than Avira if so i will change..

 

Our antivirus free guide will be posted in the near future, but yes, I rated Avast! higher than Avira.

 

Looks like I'll be staying with Avast!. Thanks for the heads up and the review, Chaz.

Just a note for others : registration is relatively quick and painless.

 

Thanks for the review, i been running avast for the past year (free edition), and i been very happy with it, has stop multiple virus, specially in torjans in webpages.

 

Haven't tried Avast yet but it is going to have to be great to beat MSE in my mind

 

Yep, I've been using Avast for going on two years now and I'm very satisfied with it!

 

I am very confident that it is. In fact, I actually prefer it over Sophos that I can use it for free (because my school provides it).

 

Same here, give or take a year. I have abandoned Spybot as my anti-malware program of choice and am now looking for alternatives. Any recommendations? I have heard Malwarebytes + Superantispyware + Spywareblaster make a great combo in conjunction with avast.

 

have been using avast for the past 3 years. No problems what so ever. Can compare only to AVG and norton to be honest - definatelly better

 

Nice review! I have been using avast for quite a few years now and have been very happy so far.

 

Good review.

After I read the review and after years of using Avast, I finally changed the crappy default skin on the virus scanner. Looks much better now.

A bit of a learning curve once you delve into the proactive web/email/peer to peer scanner shields, but worth the time and effort.

 

The new Avast! 5 would be better and It has a cooler interface. Good Job Avast!

 

I've used Avast for almost couple years now (changed from Norton Corp. version when I changed employer). I never liked the default skin myself, so usually I just disable Skins support when I install it. The resulting "avast! Simple User Interface" feels perfect to me. Worth trying, if the PowerDVD'ish default skin doesn't feel right (Custom install -> untick Skins.)

Registration does not require full details and at least I haven't ever received any ads in my mail from Avast. (Besides, the original code can be re-entered after 14 months and it apparently works in multiple computers too... )

 

Thanks for the feedback. We intentionally review all of the antivirus software like an average Joe would install it, since that is what 99% of people are going to do. If I personally was using avast!, I would be using that blue skin I took a screenshot of in the review. That is good info to know about registration as well.

 

Thanks for the info, I hadn't thought about disabling the skins at all. The PowerDVDish feel does bother me too.

 

Took me almost one year to figure that skin-trick Since then I've wished it was possible to just turn skins off at the default UI, especially how much simpler the UI is for average Joe user.

 

You have to go to settings, disable skins, then restart Avast!, which isn't something one would notice unless one went looking for it. The most obvious setting is skins, and there's no option for "no skin" under that particular option.

 

Great Antivirus and good review.
I absolutely agree with you it is very efficient and powerful and certainly better that many paid antivirus software.
i used for 2 years ago and it provide excellent protection online even before virus or malware downloaded to my laptop.
impressive

 

#1 reason I abandoned Avir was the annoying pop up ads to upgrade. In those situations, just stop offering a free version and offer paid only because those types of intrusive adds take a potential customer and totally turn them off from your product permanently.

 

Not very hard to disable the popup...

http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm

 

I installed Avast in my wife's MSI Wind, and it kept our Wind safe from virus attacks. When I purchased my laptop last month, the first thing i did was to uninstall the McAfee AV trial version that came with it, then installed Avast. (This may be off-topic)---Then I did some research if Avast would conflict with Avira----some advised not to install two AV in a PC/laptop and some attest that based on their experience the two AV don't conflict with each other. I guess I have the two AV in my laptop for around 2 or 3 weeks already and so far so good..no conflict whatsoever, hopefully none will arise. I also have WinPatrol and Windows Defender running in my laptop.

 

We have been using this at home for years and have had no problems.