I am not arguing there are no changes to the program. I am only stating I prefer v7 for many reasons, and the 'improvements' are more marketing than anything. Proof is, AVAST has not scored all that well in the independent lab tests the last couple of years. So how improved can it be? v7 scored much better in its class at the time.
Plus many so-called 'improvements' are simply bloat to me... I don't want or need phishing or ad-blocking or Web rep cr*p or any of that. And I don't want cloud services either. I also want a choice to opt-out of info-gathering. And I dislike the W8 GUI... this is not to mention that when I tried it despite all these things, it slowed my boot time by 30 secs or so, then hogged all my resources for 2 minutes.
In short, v7 has always worked well for me... until the SP1 update and now it slows boot time to 2min. Hence, I am now considering a different AV, and might as well pick one that scored higher in the labs. I only came here to see if someone had a solution to the slow boot after the Sp1 update, but it seems it doesn't happen on all machines, so there is not likely going to be an answer unless I can find one on MyDigitalLife or the Seven forums.
I just joined the forum solely because one of my computers just updated itself and overrode my wishes.
What bootsy wrote sums up my feelings exactly. I want effective software, not bloatware, and Avast older editions always provided that.
The "EmergencyUpdate" process that has been flashing up in my Zonealarm firewall (yas, that's an old version too where I control exactly what I let in and out) has been popping up frequently over the past few weeks, each time I allowed it one time access to update whatever was deemed necessary. I made the mistake of not reading the pop up properly this afternoon and allowed the update process to run. I suspect it "upgraded" to V8 and then autoupdated to 2014 because I left the computer alone and didn't change the program update settings immediately
A system restore didn't fix the problem so I uninstalled Avast 2014, wound my clock back 3 years and reinstalled the earlier version in offline mode from my backups.
I'm happy again, and can now permanently deny AvastUpdate (not definitions) from accessing the internet through ZA.
Avast should have done a much better job of communicating with its users and informing them about what was going on. I have been concerned about the number of emergency updates recently
One final thought, top marks to drake127. He actually understands the position of his customers and is honest in expressing his views, rather than simply repeating the corporate line. That alone has stopped me from seeking out another AV product this evening.