avast! Free Antivirus 7

A recent evaluation by AV-Test.org revealed that many free Android security products are barely effective and some don't seem to offer any protection at all. That's certainly a contrast with the PC arena, where many free antivirus products, avast! Free Antivirus 7 (free, direct) among them, perform very well indeed.

In the previous update, avast! added automatic sandboxing, a feature previously found only in avast!'s commercial products. Version 7 adds several more new features including the avast! market page. From this page you can upgrade to the company's full security suite or purchase avast!'s backup and password management solutions. avast! Rescue Disc ($10/once direct, 3.5 stars) is available in the market, as well as a free credit alert service.

Install and Upsell
You definitely won't have to dig into the avast! market to obtain avast!'s commercial products. During the installation and configuration process there are several opportunities to try or buy the Pro antivirus or suite. One window offers "base protection" versus "full protection," with the latter selected by default. Another offers the Pro antivirus at half-price. The welcome window includes an upgrade button, and after registration you'll get an offer for a 20-day free trial of the full suite.

On top of all this, the program's main window includes a time-limited discount offer to purchase the full suite at a discount. Well, you can't blame them for trying. Giving away protection earns a company loyalty and good feeling, but somebody has to pay the bills.

By default, the avast! installer also installs Google Chrome and makes it your default browser. Bundling fees from Google also help fund avast!'s protection giveaway.

Full Scan and Boot-Time Scan
I had no trouble installing avast! on my twelve malware-infested test systems. The setup routine reported a crash on one system, but it recovered and managed to complete the installation without further incident.

The product offers several different scan types; for testing I chose the full system scan. I also turned on the option to scan for PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), which was disabled by default.

In every case, avast! asked to run a boot-time scan, either before or after the full scan. When the boot scan came first, I ran a full scan afterward just to be sure. On my standard clean test system the full scan alone took 21 minutes, well below the current average of 30 minutes. However, running a boot scan added over 20 minutes more.

If you set up a boot scan and walk away, it can take a lot longer than 20 minutes. As soon as the scanner finds a threat it halts, awaiting your choice of action. You can delete, quarantine, repair, or ignore either the threat or all found threats. If you don't choose an option that applies to all threats the scanner will stop and wait for your response for every threat it finds. I choose "move all to chest" (quarantine) in every case. Even after that, if the scan finds a threat locate in the Windows folder you'll have respond to another confirmation prompt.

Boot-time scanning is smart, as it lets the antivirus do its work with no possibility of a rootkit or other devious threat interfering. However, I'd really, really like to see a setting in the main program that would predefine what actions the boot scan should take, so it doesn't hang up waiting for user input.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/xeNn3j5SYx8/0,2817,2401321,00.asp

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