avast! 4 Home Edition

This is yet another product that I have a rather extensive past with. I used this on some of my PC's for quite a while, and had both good and bad experience.

This was the first free anti-virus that I found after AVG. By that time I was looking for other options, heard good about AVG from a family member and thought I'd give it a try.

Protection was mostly a good experience, but a good friend and I, each at different times with different files, had a virus slip past Avast. I was able to clean mine manually, but my friend (who didn't do these sort of things for a living) had to re-image his PC.

I also had several times where I found my PC largely non-responsive only to find that it was Avast executable files where the culprits, completely using every available CPU cycle.

I cannot in good conscience say that the avast! product is an altogether bad product, and there is certainly worse available...both free and for sale.

However, I believe that there are simply too many other options that are better, free and for sale, for me to use or recommend this product at this time.

Thank you for your time.

I installed avast! 4 because the Norton 360 background scans were making my computer unusable. These background scans could not be stopped! If you install avast! 4, after you unistall Norton 360, you will have to use the Norton_Removal_Tool.exe, and buDump.exe (available from the Symantec site) or the remnants of Norton 360 will stop your browser and email from connecting to the internet. After I did this, avast! 4 is working perfectly. It is fast, doesn't hog resources, and my computer is now working like a Ferrari, not a Model-T Ford.

I have been useing Avast for more than 3 years now and install it onto every machine I have or build for friends,etc.
I have had other brands norton being the worst for hogging resorces and will cause all kinds of problems if you even think about uninstalling it, where as with Avast IT installs without a fuss and after the initial set-up runs in the background with the program hogging some resources as and when it need to but if you play games as I do then disconnect from the internet and exit from the program whilst you play.