Avast Home Edition

"A practical Anti Virus program at 0 cost"

Strength
Avast Anti-virus 4.7 Home Edition is a decent anti-virus program and there is a detailed catalogue of virus information. Beside above, it’s easy to use; the real - time update is fairly good.

Weakness
This version lacks anti-rootkit protection, antispyware, and anti-phishing protection which make your PC vulnerable in these areas. There might be some system impacts with P2P for dc++ users.

Benefits
There are two editions of Avast Anti-virus—one’s for Home and the rest is for Professional. The Home edition is designed for novices because it’s simplified, while the Professional edition is more complicated which fits advanced users. Though Home edition is free while Professional is paid, the main functions can be found in both editions, such as automatic updates, P2P and IM Shields for preventing viruses transmitted, which ensures your PC in a comparatively safe state.

The two editions also share a mode of Virus Recovery Database (VRDB), which captures information about the current state of a given file and saves that information for as many as three versions back; that is, if your system gets infected by a virus, this function could help us go back to a previous, uninfected version. It’s tested Avast Virus Recovery Database was a little incompatible with system resources sometimes.

The differences in Professional edition include: different update technology (meaning that the publisher will deploy high-priority changes to your program rather than you requesting them or waiting for the next automatic update); a script blocker (a heuristic to analyze javascript and Active X), custom tasks (such as setting Avast to run whenever your screensaver kicks in), a scheduler, and a command-line scanner (for initiating scans at a C: prompt, for example).

There are some flaws in both editions of their explicit protection from rootkits, a major security concern these days. Also, most anti-virus products include some antispyware protection, but not Avast. Next, though it would be optional, it would be good to have anti-phishing tools included as McAfee and others are doing with their anti-virus products, and a firewall would also be nice.

The VRDB has some impacted to our PC when it works—a test report shows 40% system resources territory is taken while generating VRDB.

Setup
It takes minutes to download and install the app. As I’ve mentioned that this free edition (Home edition) works only 60 days since the first startup. If you are interested in this product, the registration is a one-year license.

In order to start it up, we have to reboot after installation. Before Windows reload, Avast Anti-virus will perform a boot-level anti-virus scan to check if there are malicious wares that may load with operating system; we may wait a few minutes during this process. After checking, there will be an icon generating.

It’s surprised to find that there is not a quick door offered by Avast—it’s known to all that most software provides a shortcut to uninstall, why doesn’t it provide? If we want to remove this program, we have to perform steps as follow: click “Start" > select “All Programs” > Controls Panel” > Add or Remove Programs > Select this program and wait. After removing manually, we need to reboot as well. We can still find some files left, delete it manually again, alas!

Interface
When I first launch this program, the different interface left me a deep impression. This interface is not a tray as most anti-virus’that looks more like a joypad. The simplified interface (Home Edition) is designed for end-uses who want to protect their PC safely and the program is not hard for them to use; interface of the

simplified version is a skinnable one which can be replaced by others if we download from Internet.

The second interface; which is available only in the professional edition is more advanced, with not so creative as Home. To me, Home edition is more beautiful than Professional one. Couldn’t there be a united interface shared by two editions?

Professional is able to be as beautiful as Home, isn’t it?

System Requirements
This program can launch on Windows 98/2000/ME/NT4/XP/Vista. It runs well on my platform—my RAM configuration is 512MB, and hard disk is a matter of 80GB, CPU is Intel Pentium 2.80GB. As my computer is in medium level, I believe your computer is qualified, even exceeds mine.

Conclusion
This free edition needs improving, while I was more impressed by it instead of its professional one, maybe the interface is a unique design which earns more points - look does work! This version should strengthen its functions--I expected this could be developed better and does protect users from rootkits, spyware, and phishing.