iNews

[olddog]

I am using Avast! 4.8, build 1187, VPS 4.2.7.3. OS is XP-Home, SP2 - all updates.

The latest item shown in iNews is dated 22nd Sep 2006. According to the help file this is updated the same as VPS updates. Is this feature not working for some reason, or has there really been no news since then?

[alanrf]

My logs show that the last news update was between 27 Sep 2006 and 29 Sep 2006 (ie the date that the news update was delivered to my system in the distributed way that avast updates of this kind work (to reduce server load)).  Not too far from the date you have.   Let's not argue about a week ... so yes... that was the last news update.  Interesting to note that it even precedes the existence of the system from which I report on this.

As I recall it was a request from the avast team for the forum members to vote for avast in a some now long forgotten anti-virus popularity contest.     

However, I suspect that the check costs little more than a few CPU cycles and a very few bytes of download bandwidth.     

[psw]

Check for news is combined with check for program updates and vps updates. So it cost is not too much.

[olddog]

Thank you Alanrf and psw

I'm not concerned about download time, cpu usage etc - my concern was whether "2006 News" indicated I might have a faulty installation. It appears not, which prompts me to question whether "news" that is so totally out of date should be left to appear in a newly released version of the program.

PS. I'm another convert from AVG following the Version 8 release 

[Lisandro]

Yeah... for some reason, Alwil team dropped down the iNews and does not release updates of it. For sure, the VPS updates are independent of them.

[olddog]

Thanks Tech,

That is a pity. From a purely marketting point of view, the display of old news with no updates for well over 12 months doesn't do a lot for product image. If Avast! have abandoned the fuction it would be far better removed altogether, or at least the old out of date information removed and replaced with something like "watch this space" or "reserved for future news display". This is intended to be constructive, I like the product very much.

[alanrf]

You are the first person to mention this issue (that I can recall) in the four years that I have used avast - so while I agree with your point it is not, I think, likely to be a burning issue with the avast team.