Thanks, Vlk, I'll give that iNews_Days a try.
Incidentally, Minacross pointed out something in that thread that the team might want to look at for future versions. Maybe the "Wish List" might be a better place for this, but I'll stick it here for now.
There are at least two settings I know of, and perhaps quite a few more, where you have to actually add a new line to the ini if you want to change them from a default value, rather than edit a line that's already there. The "iNews_Days" is one, as Minacross pointed out, and another is the one relating to frequency of VRDB updates (sorry, I forget its name, but Technical's mentioned it a few times). And there's probably quite a few others which we're not even aware can be changed, simply because there's no existing ini line for them.
Obviously avast (home, anyway) is written so that it uses whatever default value for a number of settings if no line relating to them appears in the ini. Maybe the team could think about adding as many of these as possible as explicit or "real" lines in the ini? It would certainly simplify making changes when desired.
Best,
Mike