avast! Home Edition

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avast! 4 Home Edition is a feature packed free anti-virus program. avast! has an attractive and easy to use interface, regular updates, excellent virus findability and an array of useful tools to keep your computer safe and virus free. These attributes make avast! one of the most formidable free anti-virus programs available today and the preferred alternative to AVG Anti-Virus Free.

avast! Includes the Following Primary Features:

Anti-Virus Kernel

Running the latest version of the program you can expect 100% detection of known viruses and excellent detection of Trojan horses. The kernel is certified by ICSA; and frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, often yielding the VB100 award.

On Demand Scanner (Simple User Interface)

The On Demand Scanner comes in an appealing music player looking format and is totally skinnable (3 skins included). To get scanning simply select your task and hit play.

On Access Scanner – Resident Protection

The On Access Scanner performs the real time protection of the operating system and forms one of the first lines of defence against viruses and other malicious agents. The scanner provides protection by performing scans on all files read and opened. It also provides protection by monitoring the behavior of files looking for actions used by viruses.

E-mail Scanner

avast! has a heuristic module which performs heuristic analysis of e-mail activity. This advanced new feature is compatible with the majority of mail clients and scans all email traffic (both incoming and outgoing) to protect against new or unknown viruses or worms. The sensitivity of the scanner is user defined, meaning you can set your own risk level – only once warnings exceed this self defined level is the user alerted to the danger.

Network Shield

The network shield can be thought of as a light firewall and provides protection against known internet threats such as worms (This feature is only available on NT based systems - Windows NT/2000/XP/2003).

Boot Time Scanner

This useful feature is similar to Windows CHKDSK, should you suspect a virus to be present on your system about to start running its now possible to start a scan during boot – before the virus has a chance to activate and cause damage.

Explorer Scanner

avast! adds its scan options to Windows explorer, any folder/file can be right clicked on to start a scan.

Virus Chest

The Virus Chest is an isolated portion of your computers hard drive where viruses can be sent to for isolation or storage. Exe files can’t be run from within the chest so there is no danger of a virus activating. Totally safe storage is a guarantee.

Conclusions

Having run avast! on my very average desktop for some time now I have found to be a very easy to use and efficient anti-virus program. The software updates itself at least every two days or so, the processes are very light and I have noticed no differences in performance and unlike when I ran AVG I occasionally get warnings and find viruses – I usually just delete them which has proved very effective.