TerryWood, i run Avast!,shadowUser/Surfer and Acronis 8.0 as well.
I agree with Tech.....that ATI 8.0 works fine! I bought it 2 years ago and it never failed me,having done a lot of restoring of images.
I think you're rather too impatient......is half an hour of creating an image too long a time once in a while?
Or you need an image a day?
As to shadowUser,i ,too,think it hould be much better you dont Exclude or try to save from within SU any Avast update.
Why dont you do like i do, that is,i use ShadowUser like the Surfer,without any saving whatsoever,when you reboot all goes, but if i need to save any file i just insert a 1Mb pen drive
and copy it there, then,at leisure, every 1-3 days i disable ShadowUser and make all the necessary
updates everywhere. No fuss. Just the reboot time, 3 minutes once a day or three days,
i dont think it is too much a burden.....