One other thing. How come naked breasts are allowed here for someone's avatar? That is insulting to all women and something unnamed product would NEVER allow.
If you're referring to cazoza's avatar, I'd agree that it's a bit questionable but still acceptable. I don't know how about where you live, but I'd say that at least in Europe, such a picture could easily make it to mainstream media (TV, magazines, advertising etc) with no restrictions.
This forum is the ONLY way to get support for Avast free version and I gather also for the paid version (which shocks me just as the fact that unnamed product paid versions ONLY have forum support, however, unnamed product does have SERIOUS forum support which I'm not sure can be said for Avast).
It's not supposed to be the ONLY way (although it is the prefered way). We do obviously have staff that's taking care of the support tickets. If it took them 6 days to get back to the OP, that's poor, agreed, but most of the tickets are handled much faster IMO.
This forum is lacking in proper decorum for helping folks and naked women for avatars certainly does not lend the proper atmosphere for such an outstanding antivirus program as Avast 5 is shown to be. I may end up using unnamed product, warts and all, on Vista simply because I don't care for the Wild West free for all that I see here.
The avast forum started about 7 years ago, and I've been around for pretty much all that time. For the most part, I've seen it very friendly and helpful - although at times, they were obviously problems of this type (but not very often).
Now, regarding the foul language, the forum software was supposed to do some automatic substitutions (of the f-* and s-* words, for example). This obviously failed - we'll have to look into why (maybe some of the recent forum upgrades broke this feature). We obviously want to keep the forum teenager-friendly (and politically correct) but we don't want to delete posts/threats just because someone uses an ugly word or two...
Edit: the feature is now back, as you can see in the first post of this thread.
Thanks
Vlk
Yes, that is the avatar I found questionable. What does the fact that photo could make it to mainstream media (Europe or elsewhere) have to do with it being acceptable in a supposedly
serious antivirus vendor's forum? It is distracting and beneath this forum and Awil. (Sorry if that is too blunt, but I am a very honest and direct person and say what I think both good and bad).
I understand and agree that this forum should be the sole support for the free version users. But someone who bought a paid version and who has a license problem, in particular, to not get prompt help...that is bad publicity for Awil as the free version users read that and think that maybe they don't want to purchase Avast Professional, etc. since they apparently won't get better support even for a license problem. A license problem, of all things, should be settled very quickly. I hope you work on this and figure out how to avoid such a delay in the future. Interesting that the problem was the OP's email client or his ISP. It would be a good idea to offer a second method of obtaining the license such as a link in the email (as JH suggested) that could be used to download it directly if the ISP's antivirus program stripped off the attachment thinking it was a virus.
As for the "shitfilter" I don't like it. I'm American but I agree with Zyndstoff. At least the filter is not as bad as Dell's filter in their forums. I have Dell machines for many years but I rarely post in their forums because of their filter that will reject the post if you have very mild explicatives or many other words that for some unfathomable reason Dell finds offensive. I didn't love the excessive use of explicatives by mieko but I understood why and also realized that had I been in his shoes I might have done the same. I mean, Vlk, you guys don't have any phone number for a paying customer with a problem like this to reach you quickly if support fails to respond quickly? That amazes me and not in a good way. I certainly hope you heed mieko's final comment here about the need for Awil to address this issue quickly and seriously. The "unnamed" vendor (sorry, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to use another vendor's name here) I have beta tested for over three years is finally opening an office in the USA this year. That is something Awil should consider as paying customers should have a way to reach the vendor via phone if needed and I'm sure Awil would like to expand usage of the paid versions in areas like the USA.
As for my using the unnamed vendor's program on Vista because of some things I objected to in this thread/forum instead of using Avast, that is unlikely partly because I like Avast very much and also because I made the mistake of mentioning to the unnamed vendor's beta support that I had installed Avast after being told by beta support that my computer was the cause of the many problems I had rather than the problems being due to bugs in the beta which I had reported. I mentioned that uninstalling the unnamed vendor's beta product and installing Avast instead gave me back my vista virtual computer. It is like a new computer. Runs great now and is fast again and so far nary a problem with Avast. I was trying to illustrate for the unnamed vendor that the problems really were from that vendor's beta since they all disappeared with Avast installed. The unnamed vendor I guess didn't want to hear that as I was removed from beta testing for that vendor even though I was also testing the product on XP Pro and Windows 7 and did not remove it from those computers where it works well and did not ask to be removed from beta testing. Three years of giving freely of my time to test the unnamed vendor's product with no compensation and they respond in such a childish way to my trying to get them to realize they have some serious problems with the beta on Vista. I am mentioning this only because it forced me to reconsider some of the criticism I made in this thread about this forum being "the wild west" that I didn't approve of. Well, I'd much rather the "wild west" occasionally (you did state that threads like this don't happen often) than dealing with a vendor who doesn't appreciate its beta testers and acts like it has a stick up its rear end.