Instead of using Outlook why don't you switch to web based email. Its faster and easier. You can also check your email from any pc in the world. Are you really on a 56K dial up? Isn't there high speed internet in your area? If you are truly on a 56K dial up then no antivirus will be good enough when updating. Heck Norton is completely silent.
Thanks for the input.
Eleven of the email accounts that PopPeeper checks (which is what I was referring to in my previous message) ARE web based email accounts that are accessed via PopPeeper (the other six accounts I mentioned are POP and IMAP accounts which I also access via PopPeeper or of course Outlook as well. As far as accessing the email accounts on "any pc in the world" besides the 11 web based accounts the POP and IMAP accounts have their own login access that can be used anywhere as well.
I don't really use the internet enough to warrant paying for "high speed internet" in my opinion. I have two free dial-up accounts that I use.
I fully understand that the computer will be impacted by updates using dial up, my point is that it would be nice to have an easy way to know when the update process is running other than having to check the "Task Manager" to do so. Something like what MS Security Essentials has with a "pointer" graphic that can be seen during virus updates (doesn't have to be that elaborate, as I've suggested just a red "U" letter on avast ball would be sufficient of course). Then I would know an update is being performed which would explain the slower performance and I'd be able to plan accordingly as far as what I might be doing on the computer at the time. As a retired application programmer I know that this would be an added benefit that would not be difficult to provide considering how essential virus protection is for users on-line. I prefer Avast over any other virus protection applications thus the purpose of my topic was to see if there was an easy way to know when an update is running. I can see there really is no easy way other than to check the Task Manager which is a bit cumbersome in my opinion.
I fully understand that I have the choice to pay for broad band to avoid the slower performance during updates, I'm OK with the inconvenience, my only question was if there was an easy way to see if the Avast virus signature database update process was running since I couldn't find any way to do so any where in the Avast program (Avast: Maintenance > Update will not show the update if the update was started automatically which I thought might be a way).
Oh and lastly, I fully understand that dial-up users comprise a small percentage of users but that still amounts to approx 3.6M users in the US alone (that number of users would be very much significantly higher if the "world wide" users were included) and of course there are still areas that high speed internet is not available in the US and of course this is true much more so around the world.