Review: Avast! Antivirus

Hopefully this review will prove a little useful to those looking to escape the pitfall that is Norton Antivirus, or even just those that want to try a different antivirus.

Firstly, I shall give you a link to the site of this wonderful (and free for home license) antivirus.

You will find it at the nice short url of

http://www.avast.com/

You’ll want to click downloads, then Avast 4 Home edition. You should get to this page

It should be very straightforward from there. One thing to note is that the free version of Avast requires a registration key, which is easily obtainable via email. However, the form filling does take up a few valuable seconds that could be spent on virus zapping or gaming, and you have to go through the ardor of opening your inbox.

The first thing you will have no doubt noticed by now is the name.

Avast sounds very pirate like, and we all know how good pirates are. Ninjas, however are better, but that argument is for another place or time.

Image of pirate for interest:

How swashbuckling.

However, the piratey goodness stops there unfortunately, sacrificed for a very sleek gui.

(Please ignore Kristin Kreuk’s nose, it is highly irrelevant, but rather nice <3)

How very sleek.

Avast can also be skinned into whatever theme you fancy.

It is also rather easy to use, like a chrome toaster, only inside a computer and having nothing to do with toast.

To begin a scan, I just have to click the top right button as seen above. This selects local drives. Then I press the play button that would possibly be more at home on a chrome Hi-Fi, as opposed to a chrome toaster. However I like toasters more than I could ever like a Hi-Fi, so we will get back on topic and I will attempt to stop referring to kitchen appliances.

And whee, the lovely not-so piratey thing is scanning through my hard drive for all those nasty virus types, who are very un-shipshape.

Avast can also scan removable media such as CD’s, DVD’s, Floppy disks, etc. This is done by pushing the button below that that selects your hard drive, so the button middle rightish.

Another easy thing is selecting the sensitivity of the scanner. Before pressing play, a tab pops out, with a slider on it, allowing you to dictate the level of sensitivity it searches for nasties with.

Avast also comes with its ‘On-Access Scanner’.

This is very very nifty, and runs in the background all the time, updating Avast (automatically or otherwise, if you choose) and monitoring. At the mere sniff of a virus, one of the best features of Avast happens.

It shouts at you.

Well, less shouts as sirens and robot voices you, informing you that:- “Warning, Warning, there is a virus on your computer!”. But the voice is a nice female robot voice, so it isn’t too scary. I sometimes wonder if, on the rare occasion I do manage to acquire a virus (see article on Firefox), she is actually a real person, merely talking in that rather odd fashion, or very heavily edited because people may not like their computer talking to them in a normal voice. And then I wonder if, indeed this person is a real person, whether it could be Kiera Knightley or the aforementioned Kristin Kreuk, but then I realize I have a virus and I get rid of it.

However, this getting rid of process is no more than a click of a button.

Avast catches the virus in some kind of no doubt piratey net, my imagination tells me. Then the nice lady tells you about it, and then you get a little popup telling you what virus it is, what type of virus it is, and details on the virus. It has a dismiss button, and the all important virus chest archivey button. A click of the latter locks the virus up in the chest, where it is no doubt keelhauled. Virus over, your precious ‘documents’ are safe.

I do realize I am rambling considerably here, so I will stop, and sum up.

Pros:

- Piratelike name

- Slick GUI

- Foolproof, easy use interface.

- On-Access protection negates the need for a scan, catching virii before they even get into your computer

- Loud noises

- Regular Updates

- Robot lady

Cons:

- Requires email validation

- Free license must be renewed in a year

And so, it comes to the final score.

I shall give Avast! A grand

Nine out of Ten

It also deserves a

Chimpware award.
(:

Cheers for reading- Nocash

ps: edit my post again and i will kill you wang