Avast antivirus free download
The bottom line: Avast continues to push the envelope of top-shelf free security features with hybrid update tech, file reputation analysis, and more. It's independent benchmarks are a bit weak, but more than 150 million people trust Avast to keep them safe.
Review:
Looking to compete with both paid and free security suites, Avast wants to create a unified approach to your computer security. Long gone are the days of the quirky interface. Avast is accessible and robust, with an impressive list of free features and strong, though hardly stellar, performance benchmarks.
Installation
Avast has improved its installation process so it's faster than before. It's not the fastest on the market, not by a longshot, but a standard installation took us about three minutes.
Some items of note during the installation that will come up later in the review: to avoid the new Windows 7 and Vista desktop gadget, or the new WebRep browser add-on, you must choose the Custom install option and uncheck those here.
Automatic installation of these features is frowned upon, although Avast does provide a clear method for uninstalling them. It's just not as simple as a check box that gets its own installation window, since you have to go through the Customize menu, which makes the auto-install sort of surreptitious.
The current versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer both block forced add-on installation. When you run one of those browsers for the first time after installing Avast, they'll ask you if you want to allow the new add-on.
On the plus side, installing Avast doesn't require a reboot, and using its uninstall tool we detected no remnants in the Registry or on the desktop. Avast has said that the installer has shrunk for all three versions by about 20 percent, although it's still a large download at around 70MB for the free version.
A new Avast installation option, available only from the custom install menu, lets you sideload Avast as a secondary security program to supplement your main one. We're not big fans of this option from a security point-of-view, because it can bog down your system resources without actually making you safer. However, for seeing if you like Avast, it's not a bad thing as long as you remember to choose one security suite to go with.
What's puffing the sails in Avast 2012?
Avast 7's interface hasn't changed much over the past three versions. There've been some decorative changes, a darkening of color here, lightening of grays there, but the changes have been either lightly cosmetic or utilitarian. For example, there are big graphics to illustrate the more nebulous security concepts that only have an on-or-off switch. This may sound useless, but it's actually quite clever because it helps you visualize how one of the more complex Avast features is keeping you safe without bogging you down in jargon.
Highlighted with the familiar security colors of green for safe and red for dangerous, the Summary tab gives up-to-date info on shield status, auto-updates, virus definitions, the program version, and whether the silent/gaming mode is on. There's also an unobtrusive ad urging you to upgrade to Avast Internet Security 7 if you're using the free version, and an option to connect an Avast account. (This is for the Avast Web management tool, expected to be live about a month from when this review is published.)
The Summary tab contains two submenus, Cloud Services and Statistics. The former shows you how Avast's servers help protect you, and offers a Settings button.
The latter is for those intrepid folks who're curious to see how Avast's shields have been performing against threats. It's where you can get your math geek on. For each shield, it tells you how many files were scanned and when, and presents the data in a concise graph.
Avast's browser add-on now works in Safari (not pictured), and paid users can force their browsers to always run sandboxed from a single checkbox.
(Credit: Avast )
The free version of Avast is arguably the most comprehensive set of freely available security features on the market. There's a reason these guys have more than 150 million active users (at the time this review was written). The antivirus, antispyware, and heuristics engines form a security core that also includes multiple real-time shields. Along with the new features, it's got an AutoSandbox for automatically walling off suspicious programs; a full complement of shields that guard against scripts, P2P networks, instant messaging, and potentially dangerous program behavior; a silent/gaming mode; on-demand boot scanning; and a healthy output of statistics for the data nerds.
Avast's sandbox, by the way, automatically places programs in a virtualized state when it suspects them of being threats. It walls off suspicious programs, preventing them from potentially damaging your system while allowing them to run. As the program runs, the sandbox keeps track of which files are opened, created, or renamed, and what it reads and writes from the Registry. Permanent changes are virtualized, so when the process terminates itself, the system changes it made will evaporate.
The company hasn't said whether the virtualized state begins after the program already has access to your system, so it's theoretically possible that it could be compromised. There's not a single security feature in any program that hasn't been been compromised at some point, though, so "theoretically hackable" is true of all security features. The AutoSandbox will now advise you when you're done using it as to how best to handle the program in the future.
The AutoSandbox for free users is different from Avast's paid-upgrade sandbox, and the paid upgrades to Avast Pro and Avast Internet Security include both the automatic version and the older, manually initiated version.
You can access the AutoSandbox settings from the new Additional Protection option on the left nav. It defaults to asking the user whether a program should be sandboxed, although you can set it to automatically decide. There's a whitelist option for programs that you always want to exclude from the sandbox, or you can deactivate the feature entirely.
In addition to these core security features, Avast has some nifty extras to help you out. The Troubleshooting section now comes with a "restore factory settings" option, which makes it easier to wipe settings back to a familiar starting point, and comes with the option to restore only the Shields settings, leaving other changes untouched, like permanently running in silent mode.
There's a sidebar desktop gadget for Windows 7 and Vista, and you can set automatic actions for the boot-time scan. Available under the Scan Computer tab, the boot-time scan customizations give you far more flexibility in managing the lengthy and time-consuming boot scan.
Meanwhile, new in Avast Free is the Remote Assistance feature, for single-instance, friend-to-friend remote tech support. Part of the main Avast interface, all the other person has to have is...Avast.
It's a good way to get others to install the program, but this isn't the only single-serving tech support option around. Still, in our tests, it worked fine. One person shares a code with the other, and voila! Instant remote PC access. Simply close the window to break the connection.
Avast doesn't offer an on-demand link-scanning feature, like AVG and Norton do, although the company says that the way that Avast's Web shield behaves ought to protect you automatically from any malicious URLs by automatically preventing the URL from resolving in-browser. A page will appear letting you know that Avast has blocked the site because it is suspected to contain a threat.
There weren't many big changes for Avast Pro Antivirus or Avast Internet Security users, but there were improvements made to the Safe Zone and Browser Sandbox features. The Browser Sandbox now lets you force Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari to always run sandboxed away from your system. SafeZone now automatically asks you when you're about to perform a browser-based financial transaction if you'd like to switch to the SafeZone mode.
Performance
As far as Avast's impact on system performance goes, in a real-world test Avast completed its scans in a timely yet not blazingly fast manner. A Quick Scan took about 20 minutes, and the Full Scan took 59 minutes. RAM usage was surprisingly light, with Avast only eating up about 16MB when running a scan.
Avast License Key Valid until 2038 : W6754380R9978A0910-4TZ59467
YOU CAN ALSO USE THESE LICENSE KEYS VALID FOR ONE YEAR
W38238872H4200A1106-J8NESC6V
W36084977H3000A1106-D0CFW519
Nice work brother i realy need it
ReplyDelete