Avast! Free Anti-Virus

Avast! Free Anti-Virus

With the growing threat of virus and malwares it is unthinkable to go without capable anti-virus software. Fortunately there are currently a lot of free antiviruses available for Windows 8 in the market. One of the more popular is Avast! So how does this software compare?

First of all Avast! has been in the industry for quite some time now, and with that kind of staying power, this company must be doing something right. In fact this software is cited as one of the top antivirus software by several websites. A summary of the good points include the following:
Easy on the system – it isn’t going to slow down your PC like other more resource hungry anti-virus programs.
 Capable of detecting unknown threats – utilizing a heuristics engine this software can defeat threats which are not currently known.
Unobtrusive – it provides a way to turn off notifications when you’d rather not be disturbed (i.e. gaming).

When it comes to installing software to your PC it is always a good idea to check if it is legit, since a lot of software offering to remove viruses and malwares from your PC are in fact Trojans and malware themselves. It truly helps that Avast! is a well-known brand and has been around quite a while, and has been featured in various tests and reviews. Based on several respected authorities on PC health such as PC http://www.pcpro.co.uk, http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk and http://www.pcmag.com   this is a pretty solid antivirus program with a wide range of features.
Features
Features of the current version of Avast! as mentioned previously is quite formidable. Some of the most popular and useful of these features are as follows:
Anti-virus (free version)
Anti-malware Protection (free version)
SafeZone (paid version) – for secured payments and banking
Silent Firewall (paid version)
Anti-spam (paid version)
Automatic software updater (paid version)
Access Anywhere (paid version) – so you can access your pc anywhere
Data shredder (paid version) – to permanently delete data
Problems and Disadvantages
However no software is perfect. It has been noted that installing Avast! on an infected machine could prove to be difficult. As such it is preferable to install Avast! Antivirus before your PC is infected as a preventive measure. If your machine is already infected, you might want to consider other options as some infections are known to be able to delete or block certain Avast! modules.
Another caveat is that scanning your system using Avast! can be quite heavy on your PC. I did mention that the program doesn’t slow down your PC but that is when it is just blocking threats; however scanning is a different matter. You might want to schedule your scans when you are not planning to do any other resource intensive task on your PC.

Windows 8
You might also come across another problem when you upgrade your system from Windows 8 to Windows 8. There are reports on Windows deleting Avast! once you upgrade. This won’t be too much of a problem since Avast! also has a Windows 8 version available for download. More serious are the reports on getting a black screen after loggin in Windows 8 and being unable to login after boot time scan. Windows 8 is still quite new and I’m sure Avast! would iron out these problems soon. However as of the moment if you have Windows 8 don’t expect this software to be bug free.

Sources
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