There are certainly no shortage of anti virus vendors nowadays and choosing an anti virus solution can be tricky. The reason being is that no anti virus is 100% effective and probably ever will be. Because of that sometimes we have to look at the other features that it offers to help us decide which the best to use is.
Avast have been in the anti virus and security field for quite some time and their reputation certainly shows that they are experts in what they do. Their anti virus software comes in a free and paid for version, both of which differ but offer a very high level of protection. Let's dive in and see what Avast has to offer.
Program Features - Avast uses a series of shields to protect your computer from the most common types of threats. It separates these shields up into these categories; Anti virus, mail, web, network, p2p file sharing, instant messaging and behaviour (heuristics shields). The advantage of this is that you can configure each shield individually and also disable them one by one without affecting other areas of protection.
User Interface - Avast has a very clean user interface that is not bogged down with fancy graphics or large amount of menus. This is good because it makes it easy to navigate and also keeps the program loading times to minimum. The main tabs give you the important features such as a program summary, the full computer scan options, the real time shield status's and the maintenance or options menu. There are plenty of options to customise the operation of Avast but also not too many that will complicate or confuse things.
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Anti Virus Detection - The core of any anti virus software is how well it does in detecting and removing viruses and this differs from vendor to vendor. Avast scores very high in this department and has an effective detection engine that is in the top five of all anti virus software suites. In the tests I conducted Avast was able to detect and remove various malware and virus ridden files. I would recommend that you turn up the heuristics sensitivity to full when using Avast as this improves the detection of 'unknown' viruses.
Free and paid version differences - The free version of Avast offers an effective real time protection shield against malware, adware, viruses and some web exploits. The main differences in the paid version are that it offers much faster definition updates, a sandbox feature which allows you to run suspect files without worrying about them causing any damage to your system. It also offers a better web shield that is much more effective against web exploits and phishing scams. Finally it also has a scripting shield to protect against common windows scripting viruses which frequently occur in office documents.
In summary Avast is a great anti virus suite that will give continuous protection against many different types of threats. It runs fast and doesn't bug you unless there is a problem or a critical update.
