Register and then try.
No, not yet - and I had my reason for it; I wanted to find out more ... and I was right to wait with registering as now the source of the problem is found: a clock/time-problem with built-in hardware-clock ... As two different operating systems are on that Netbook and one was treating hardware-clock-time as local time and the other one as UTC, AVAST got a mess with it. Consequence of AVAST was in that case (time/clock-inconsistency) to just block not only protection, but also ask for an immediate registering - even if trial period was still lasting 28 days (now I have again these 28 (or now 27) days as trial period).
In my eyes THAT behaviour is not acceptable. AVAST should report an error and tell the user that there might me some time/clock-problem to give the user the opportunity to resolve it - and if after a certain time (let's say at least two hours more than the time difference at international date line that is more than 24 hours) the problem is still not resolved and AVAST is still having a time problem, blocking might a solution. I also consider it as problematic if AVAST stops protection when time error is just 2 hours as this can happen without any intent of cheating (I assume it might be a cheat-protection against time/clock-cheating to use time-dependent software without paying the fee). I consider the behaviour here as a too severe cheating protection - having the potential to question the reliabilty; and THAT is pure poison for a security software - speically in a trial period.
A less patient user (with less good experience with AVAST) would only have uninstalled AVAST and taken AVG or some other AV-product ... and that cannot be the intent of AVAST!
Question: how does AVAST behave if you pass the international date line between Tonga or Kiribati and French Polynesia (where you have to set back your watch for more than 24 hours) when being still in trial mode - or just travelling from east to west (where you have to set back your clock/watch). The experience here lets assume that AVAST will block protection and ask for immediate registration - and additionally only allow offline-registration, no online-registration ... What happens in both cases: with a) OS treats hardware-time as local time and b) OS treats hardware-time as UTC ... What happens then? Additionally the registration screen is not unproblematic and misleading: if you don't have big contrast on your pc-screen you don't see that all three parts of the page are closed - even if there is a register-button. I first was assuming that the first part was open - and therefore the others also - but there would not be anything to be displayed in the others. In my eyes that page has to be improved so that it is clearly visible what is open and what not - and there shold not be any element below if a part is closed, i.e. there should not be any element between two openable parts when both are closed.
If you don't like avast you can always uninstall using http://files.avast.com/files/eng/aswclear.exe
I'not using AVAST for nothing since many years! And I had best experiences with it - besides some minor "misbehaviours" (I remember the case where AVAST was treating EVERY running application as Virus; that was once during the night (in Europe), and with big intervention in the forum here, within some 1-2 hours, the update was retired and only those people that had running machines between 1h and 3h in the morning were affected). And some minor flaws like those two here. That's not peanuts - but these are things that always can happen, specially with a software that permanently updating is just a part of it. That's not the problem.
And I would like a slightly different behaviour when using manual virus-update: I don't like the permanent acclamation-mark in the tray icon that appears even when your virus-database is brand new and totally up-to-date - and I don't like the "warning" that wants to force you to set to automatic virus-updates. And I don't like the big window that ALWAYS appears when updating the virus-database manually. Better solution would be to show the acclamation mark as soon as there is a new virus-update that is not yet installed. And as soon that is installed, the acclamation mark disappears - to reappear at the moment of a new virus database etc. It is a big difference if update is set "tell, warn, announce, give the user the immediate possibility to update" etc. compared just to have turned the update totally off. AVAST treats these two cases (update off and "ask for updating as soon as an update is ready") the same - and that cannot be the solution!!!
And I also don't like that if you leave your action-preferences to "default" (affected) files are deleted (I still remember the treatment of any running application of that "night bug" - when just clicking OK at the warning, you were damaging every running application and the system). In that context, I would like to have the possibility to set ALL action-prefs at once. I am thinking of two or three preference-default-variations that you can set with "one click", one for the "computer-users" and one for the "technicians/specialists" or else. It always takes about half an hour just to configure every single "action-preference" to set to
1) repair (if possible) 2) move to chest 3) block
1) ask 2) 3) move to chest 3) repair (if possible)
1) ask 2) 3) move to chest 3) block
1) repair (if possible) 2) move to chest 3) delete
etc.
default is
1) move to chest 2) delete ... What I cannot allow - in no case!! That preference makes me not to recommend people to install AVAST themselves, but to let me install it. If they don't change these preferences, they risk damaging their software AND operating-system.
The thing is that usually a user sets all setting to the same pattern - so it would be elegant to have a "central action-behaviour setting" that applies to all actions - but still allowing to set every single action-behaviour separately if needed.
It would spare lots of time if I could: a) install AVAST, b) set "central action-behaviour" to what I prefer, and c) change some single action-behaviour that I want to have different from the main pattern.
I don't think that this is too much work to implement (as version 4.8 had some more comfortable configuration settings).
Otherwise I only have best experiences with AVAST, and all PCs where I have recommended it or even installed it never had a serious problem or infecttion.
I have a feeling you are making something simple, difficult.
I don't think so - I assume I just found a quite rare flaw of AVAST that is just at the border between inconvenience and bug ... and sometimes quite a lot of details are needed to outline some unexpected behaviour.