Received an answer from the moderator of the Outpost forum which follows.
"It looks like you have the Tools/Automatically Check for Update option ticked on your Outpost menu. Deselect this and the activity should stop (I was not aware that it ran that often though...)."
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=61384#post61384Shut it off, and the I/O activity ceased for Outpost and Avast. For anyone out there running Outpost version 1, this option hangs out under the HELP menu.
Thank you to Technical & VLK for your help and suggestions
Arn