Avast Home Edition 4.8.1201.80516

Publisher's description of Avast Home Edition

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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 improves compatibility with Windows XP SP3.

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Editor's review of Avast Home Edition

This impressive software provides the same steadfast protection of well-known antivirus programs, yet it's surprisingly free.

Avast Home Edition guards your PC and the network with multiple shields that scan executables and files. You can select parameters for scanning, and even choose wildcards to exclude specific file types. You can adjust the sensitivity level for the program's detectors when it comes to scanning downloaded files, instant messages, e-mails, and a host of P2Ps. Its efficient interface opens up window after window to tweak its settings to your liking, for novice to advanced level protection.

Though it took quite some time to run, we're impressed with this application's boot-time antivirus scan. Fortunately, if you're in a pinch you can bypass it. If malicious contents are detected, Avast comes to the rescue with handy virus cleanup tools. Some decent PC controls are even handed out here. You can block certain URLs and file operations, such as writing to files or even renaming, deleting or formatting them.

With immediate real-time protection, clockwork updates, and much more, this free software is highly regarded in our book.

User reviews of Avast Home Edition

• Average user rating: out of 6945 votes
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  Avast Home Edition

  the only one for me

  by: super61 on 13-May-2008 03:13:36 PM

  Pros: it work and protect my pc form every threat.

  Cons: none really avast rules !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^_^

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  Avast Home Edition

  Avast Home Edition

  by: Omega Weapon on 14-May-2008 01:10:01 AM

  Pros: I am currently using Avast Home Edition which truly a great anti-virus. It comes with some amazing features:

  Internet Mail:

  - Scan outbound mail [SMTP]

  - Scan inbound mail [POP3]

  - Scan inbound mail [IMAP]

  - Scan inbound news [NNTP]

  - Scan outbound news [NNTP]

  - Heuristic sensitivity: medium

  Instant Messengers:

  - MSN Messenger

  - ICQ

  - Trillian Messenger

  Network Shield:

  - Show messages

  Outlook:

  - Scan inbound and outbound mail

  - Scan unread messages on open

  - Heuristic sensitivity: medium

  P2P Shield:

  - Kazaa & KazaaLite

  - Direct Connect

  - Direct Connect++

  Filesystem:

  - Scan selected files on write

  - Scan selected files on open

  Web Shield:

  - Scan HTTP traffic

  Could you ask for a better Anti-Virus?

  Cons: It has no match for Norton anti-virus but still a decent anti-virus.

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  Avast Home Edition

  Considered the most.

  by: shockwavesn1per on 14-May-2008 02:45:40 PM

  Pros: After using AVG 8.0 Free, I decided to move to avast! 4.8 due to AVG's "avgrsx.exe"'s heavy memory usage. avast! also proves to be quite effective with it's rootkit, spyware, and virus scanner bundled all in one. It's processes take up at most 20MB of RAM. What I liked best about this program is the flexible options that enable users to configure the program to their own likings. Also, avast! offers a variety of Resident Shields from IM, P2P, Web, and Network shields. It's scanner will take some time, but it offers three different modes of scanning. The updates are quite fast and skins are available.

  Cons: None.

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (6 of 6 users said yes)

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  Avast Home Edition

  good

  by: saleh_duwahi on 13-May-2008 12:41:56 PM

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  Avast Home Edition

  Not for me

  by: nigc on 17-May-2008 04:18:51 AM

  Pros: As a long time user of AVG Free, I downloaded Avast Home Edition looking for an alternative following Grisoft's decision to replace version 7.5 with version 8, which doesn't offer full protection beyond 30 day trial unless you opt for one of the paid versions. Download & set up was straightforward. Liked the UI. All the options were easy to understand. Scans (full system on thorough level) took longer than with AVG, but could be left to run without significantly slowing my PC while running other apps. Scans can be adjusted by level & area as required. Didn't find any problems or threats, so I can't comment on how these are handled. Updates of anti virus database are frequent & fully automated, often more than once daily. Option to run boot time scan is useful.

  Cons: Unlike AVG, I didn't find any sceduled scan function, so always had to run them manually. The update to version 4.8.1201.80516 took ages to download & caused major issues, in paricular with the outlook plug-in. Restart button following update failed to respond & maual restart resulted in Outlook wanting to disable the plug-in before it would open (critical error). PC also ran significantly slower. Both were completely cured by uninstalling Avast.

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