I have the offline setup for avast free version 17.2291. I installed it (just File and web shields),
and although it took about 5 minutes after every boot up to settle down (disk activity - this PC has a very slow HDD),
it was generally usable.
About a week later it updated to the latest version even though I had set program update to "manual".
PC is now unusable and I promptly uninstalled. There's no use moaning about avast's inability to honor
the manual setting - we all know this sometimes happens - although I thought by version 2291 it wouldn't do it.
Is this older version no good for 32 bit Windows 7?
If I thought I could stop it updating, I'd retry it. Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.
I have that version running on an XP PC and it's been fine for over a year, never did anything I didn't expect.