Eleven months ago I decided it was time to buy a license for Avast, the best antivirus program available. I had been using Avast free for years; great user experience, best av available, period. So I pitched in like a nice guy and bought the $29.99 license. Yikes.
My user experience went downhill faster than a TV preacher in a house of ill repute. Endless sales pitches from the system tray, even in gaming mode. "You may be at risk" -themed interruptions, aye yi yi. Nothing can be accomplished in the GUI without carefully searching for the little grayed out button that means, "please just do what I'm asking, I don't need another upgrade or add-on, thanks very much." When the subscription is out, I am going to carefully uninstall Avast, scrub the registry, invent a new user account and try the free version again. If it isn't still an awful lot better than Pro, I'll be back to reviewing antivirus programs for the first time this decade.
