The major problem with avast 4.8 is that it has a different virus definitions update stream (changed in avast5), it isn't the same as avast 5/6/7 virus definitions update. The major issue is maintaining that additional virus definitions update stream.
This is "something internal" of avast – so as a user I don't care how and on what stream the VDB-update is coming – as long as it IS coming.
The issue and problem is that avast7 is unusable on a notebook with something like PIIIM or Celeron 1200MHz having 512MB of RAM (unable to put more than 1GB) and runnig w2k and/or XP. The problem is: turn avast off the machine is very nicely usable for many "bureau"-things (sure, not for photo- or video-editing – but that's not the topic); there are still lot's of machines like that in a absolutely perfect state (looking like new), and perfectly usable for standard office work. It's not that avast7 is not installable; but if you do that, the device is no longer normally usable as everything is too slow; even a PI/200 with 32MB of RAM (or something similar overaged) without AV-protection would be faster – and that performance decrease is just not acceptable – specially when having in your backhead that avast 4.8 is not only doing just that what is needed, but also more or less the same as v7, but working nicely and not decreasing performance so much.
As said: what update stream is used is absolutely secondary (or even totally irrelevant) directly for the user – as long as he gets the updates.
That said the major issue would then be what OS is being used; some considerable time ago avast were going to drop support for win9.x and winME, but that got a stay of execution as avast 4.8 was still supported until 4.8 life support is switched off. At some point avast will be introducing features that won't work on older OSes, like win2k and winXP, but that is likely to be that those users won't be able to use those features which aren't supported by the OS.
Again: these features that the OS is not supporting could just be turned off instead of slowing down the device (but I've no idea if that's the reason).
Again (in maybe quite hard words): if the avast programmer are not able not bloating up the new version 8 so much that it's not running smothely also on a PIII/1GHz with 512MB of RAM under w2k/xp, the solution will be either no AV-protection at all (what I can't recommend) – or some other product (and that's also something that I don't like to recommend)! But keep in mind: basic protection is needed – more would be luxury (that those whol still use w2k/xp don't care anyway); that's the important thing!
And the other question is: why need support – as long as the stuff is working and regularly updating?
