I'm underwhelmed both by the reliability of Avast and the attitude of their support people and management
Can you elaborate both things? I mean, the reliability and the attitude?
I'll try to, but until Sunday any responses from me will have to be very disorganized, since I am under some time pressure in the real world until then. For example, the URLs below may include redundancies; in any case, I believe that the Avast people deleted the original threads from the v. 5 beta board.
The threads below refer to the fact that on a few systems, the gadget which sends email alerts on a detection event works when tested with the "test" button, but not when tested with an EICAR file pseudo-detection, even when a non-SSL SMTP server is used. This was first reported by me as a problem with the v. 5 beta; I really do need the function. A member of the Avast! development team simply said that he couldn't reproduce it, and Avast! simply ignored the problem afterwards, even though five or six different people reported it, presumably on varied systems, and Avast! was (is?) still advertising it as a feature.
1. I don't think that the Avast! developer who said that he couldn't duplicate the problem was trying very hard. If I saw four or five people on these boards saying that they have the problem, it can't be that rare. Maybe if he had asked those users some questions he could have found out what their systems had in common, and then he could have duplicated the problem. However, neither he nor anyone else from Avast! asked anything; they just ignore the problem, because they just don't care.
2. It's not just a QA and support problem. When the Avast! tech department sees something like this, and then doesn't even bother responding on the boards (after their original 7 or 8 word non-answer), they're making it clear that they feel contempt for the customer. The message is clear: 'We won't even bother responding, even though we know that an advertised feature doesn't work on many systems, because you scummy littler customers just aren't worth our time. We'll get enough $50 purchases from the customers on whose systems that feature does work, or who don't need the feature and never test it. As for respect for our customers as human beings, or pride in a job well done, are you joking?'
As I said, I don't have time to check the references right now, and the original beta threads were deleted, but these might be relevant:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=67352http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=59054.msg497996#msg497996http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=60345Just in case some of the younger people on this board are curious as to what I mean by pride in doing one's job, they might want to see this famous example:
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090606000131/http://vatel.netfirms.com/ (I had to post the Wayback Machine version, because the original site no longer exists.)
As to the problems with the reliability of the software, I am judging by what I have seen on these boards, in comparison with what I see on other AV and security software boards. I was testing v. 4 for a while for my own use, and had no major problems myself.
Thanks.
C.