Alwil is the company behind "avast! Free Antivirus". It has been certified by "icsa labs", which mean this is not just another worthless piece of software, but just as good as other full priced products. "avast! Free Antivirus" is also known for taking up less of the computers resources than other antivirus software. After all it is pointless to have an expensive virus killer running, when it in itself makes the computer more slow and jerky than if it were in fact infected by a virus.
The latest edition has many new improvements, and gamers will be very pleased about the new Silent/Gaming mode. With this activated, you won't be bothered with pop-ups whenever new virus definitions have been downloaded or whatever. As long as there is a full screen application running, Silent/Gaming mode will turn off any pop-up message until you have left full screen exclusive mode. Another usefull improvement is the "Code Emulator" that will be used when avast! encounters suspicious code. This emulator will emulate execution of the code in a safe way, to see what it actually does, before it lets the code be executed by your computer.
There are many ways for computer viruses to spread. avast! Free Edition does not only protect you by scanning files, but it stops dangerous files from ever getting in to your system. It scans incoming mail and it controls the web pages you visit to stop suspicious code. Even files that are sent to you when you are chatting using software like MSN and Yahoo!Chat is scanned.
When you are using avast!, you also have the possibility of running a Boot-time scan. This means the computer is scanned BEFORE the operating system has started. Sadly, this currently only works on 32bit systems, but it gives you a chance to stop viruses before they get executed or have a chance to spread.
When you install "avast! Free Antivirus" you will be recomended to install Google Chrome as your web browser. If you would rather keep your old browser, just make sure to uncheck the checkbox here. You will also get the possibility to join the avast! Community. This we would recomend, as it helps to spread information about new viruses to other users of avast!, and helps minimize the spreading of those viruses. If a virus that is unknown to Alwil is found on your computer, they will automatically be alerted and be given the signature of this virus, so that they can update the virus definitions and send out an update as quickly as possible.
| Producer | Alwil | Alternatives | Norton Antivirus, F-Secure, Norman Antivirus |
| Size | 44.696.968 bytes |  |
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| Homepage | www.avast.com | ||
| Forum | Support | ||
| Relevant sites | |||
| Open source | No | ||
| Specal requirements | Registration required (free) | ||
| Requirements | 32-bit or 64-bit Windows OS with 100MB free hard drive space | ||