A couple of semi-official comments:
- it is not realistic to think about Q3 this year. End of the year would be great, but it is not guaranteed in any way. We definitely don't want to rush it.
- proactive detection (or, rather, prevention of zero day malware) is (as already announced) one of the hottest topic of the new version. But of course, even the current version of avast ( 4.8 ) engine contains a couple of methods designed to tackle yet-unknown malware.
- I don't want to comment the recommendations about specific (competing) AV products given above -- let me just say that Nod32 is not what it used to be now...

- the GUI will be totally changed. If you say please nicely, I may consider posting some preliminary screenshots

).
Take care
Vlk