Yeah, I don't think the icon is doing anything really, it was just the one time it tried to connect to the internet that it scared me a little. Just looking in the program settings, there are some options about Updating, 'I only connect through dial up' and 'I am permanently connected'. Neither of these are ticked, will one of these ensure that it will not try to look for updates if there is not a connection already available?
It doesn't show up in task manager (Close program dialog in 98, I don't know if that's exactly the same thing) so I'll have to use msconfig to make sure it doesn't load in and then restart the computer if I really don't want it. Like I said I don't think avast itself causes that much of a memory hog or whatever but if I have my firewall and spyware stuff active as well I always get stutters in my recordings.