I have been a long-time user and loyal advocate of Avast! AVS (since 2005), and have adamantly shared the virtues of your services with countless friends, family, and co-workers across two continents. I was always impressed with how much came in such a small - and free - package.
In December 2013, I decided to give myself a Christmas present and bought the Premier subscription.
So far, I have been less than impressed.
The program itself is system-heavy, and the services bloat - and often freeze - my processors. The number of false positives has increased significantly, even sending out repeated alerts on files I have already defined as safe. The engine has progressively become slower to boot with each "new and improved" update.
And now, with this latest version, the program is constantly announcing my system firewall has not started, even though all verifications have shown it to be running smoothly. I have rebooted my computer, and I have turned my firewall off and on again, so the old IT chestnuts are not the issue.
I have a subscription to another vendor's full-service maintenance app, which includes an optional AVS, but I have kept that service from running to avoid definition conflicts, since I still have another 8 months in this Avast! subscription year (had planned to cancel Avast! before it renewed, but missed the date).
The other AVS comes highly rated, and with these increasing issues I am close to just cutting my losses with Avast! and cancelling mid-term. I considered just reverting back to Avast! free, but I am already paying for the other vendor, so common sense prevails.
Thank you, ALWIL and Avast!, for many years of excellent free coverage. Sorry your value for cash isn't as fine.