INTRODUCING: avast! Home/Pro 4.5 BETA

[Timo Schmidt]

Kickarse Antivirus-Prog.

After replacing avast! 4.1 with Kaspersky Antivirus Personal 5 (buyed it for 39 €!) I thought "give the 4.5 Version of AVAST! a try" (the worm-blocker seems to be a nice addon for 4.5 ).

So I uninstalled Kaspersky and installed Avast 4.5 beta:

WOW - I was realy impressed. First I made a complete scan of my Harddisks and avast! found 2 Trojans (Trojano...) which KAV didn't find. And the Overall Systemspeed is much better with avast! (dont know if this was the case with 4.1 coz I used KAV for some month now ) despite of it's use of RAM (Kaspersy used only the half amount of RAM of AVAST). Video-Files open faster, loading times are much faster, even my scores in some benchmarks went up (I think AVAST hast a lower CPU-Usage than KAV).

And then therer are the many many configuration possibilities of the GUARD (the e-Mail guard for example is awesome) which weren't there with KAV

To sum it up:

A free antivirus prog isn't always worse than a expensive antivirus-prog.

---> Guys - add me to the list of satisfied AVAST! user again


2 questions:

- Can I use RejZor's /Craftec's Sharp-Skin with this release (it's the only skin besides "skinless" I realy love - it should belong to the standard skins)?

- When will beta-releases supported with new definition-updates? I think if you want someone to be beta-tester for alwil it is recommended that these user get the same update-support than user of normal releases (if this isn't the case it would be very dangerous to be beta-tester for you - not only because there might be bugs in the beta releases )


Keep up the good work!

Timo

[Eddy]

First I made a complete scan of my Harddisks and avast! found 2 Trojans (Trojano...) which KAV didn't find

No av apllication can/will find everything. There are also thing kav finds and Avast not.

Kaspersy used only the half amount of RAM of AVAST)

If you got the ram info from the taskmanager, forget it. That is not showing the correct amount as explained in another thread on this board.

And then therer are the many many configuration possibilities of the GUARD

You should see the options in the Pro version !

Can I use RejZor's /Craftec's Sharp-Skin with this release

Ofcourse you can use the skins if you want.

When will beta-releases supported with new definition-updates?

vps updates are already supported, even in the beta version. What would make you think they are not? This is after all AVAST

[radicalb21]

Hey Timo,
It's radicalb21. To answer your first questions about the skins I'm using the skin you are talking about with no problems. To answer your second question VLK wrote the following:

"This time there should be no problems though..."

I hope this helps.

[rdsu]

CPU peaks while browsing email?

Hardly anything to do with the mail scanner (as it scans the mail on trasport level).

BTW is the avast tray icon spinning while you have the CPU peaks? Can you identify the process that's taking up the CPU? Has this been happening prior to updating to the 4.5 beta?


Thanks
Vlk

This only happen when I read the new mail. The mail that are marked as already read doesn't happen nothing.
I've set the "Standard Shield" to scan all the created/modified files, so I think that is this, because when I read the new mail, the process "ashServ.exe" takes about +/-30MB of CPU and the last scanned file in "Standard Shiled" is the file of where the mail is...

I didn't know if this happen with the previous version...

[Timo Schmidt]

Hey Timo,
It's radicalb21. To answer your first questions about the skins I'm using the skin you are talking about with no problems. To answer your second question VLK wrote the following:

"This time there should be no problems though..."

I hope this helps.

This helps very much - thx

I only asked for beta-vps-updates because in one AVAST 4.1 beta-build (think it was a newer build for french-translation) I never got definition-updates from your server


Greetings

Timo

[RejZoR]

Yeah Vlk said they made a mistake that time. With this beta it will be ok.

[Eddy]

I don't see Avast 4.5 Beta on the beta page on the website

[S.Z.Craftec]

Love it, installed, no probs.  First time I have download a piece of software that I haven't wanted to skin, love the look.  

Hehe, you could always buy avast! Pro version, and you wouldn't be bothered with skins...  

[Negeltu]

He's not bothered with skins now... :-D

[S.Z.Craftec]

Me neither... I erased them all from my hard drive. I hate them from the guts. If I see the guy who made them, I'll cut his... hmmm... hand...  

Btw, I just made new skin for avast! It's called "INVISIBLE GUI". It's so invisible, that you can not find it on the skins download section. To be true, I couldn't find it myself... I just have to find a way how to start avast! after enabling this skin...      

[Baba]

Downloaded the Home-Beta and installed now on the Italian language set up.
Everything seems to work properly.

Installed on XPPro SP2-ZAPro-SpySweeper-SpywareBlaster-SpywareGuard-IESpyad-SpybotS&D-
Ad-AwareSE-CCleaner-NortonSystemWorksPro-
A-squarred2-MRUBlaster-XPAntispy-RegSeeker-

The only things I notice 1 more Provider (Network Protection) and the deletion of E-Mail Wizard.

I'm going to install Thunderbird 8 and try the mail protection on this client because with last version I was not able to make it working whit.

Any other things I miss in new version?
Tell me, please.

Greetings from Italy
                                                                 Baba

[Lisandro]

Well, I wouldn't call it a danger, but theoretically, some problems may occur in specific parts of the program. I hope the beta will be updated soon to a newer version.

Igor, I sent you two corrections in the Portuguese interface. Hope they could be useful. Other errors related here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=11;action=display;threadid=8072

[Lisandro]

I didn't mean MY SKINS... I thought of skins in general... Martin made huge number of skins, RejZor made one... also, Darren...

Thank you all that made that skins. Really wonderful ones.

It's not about me... and it's not about Alwil made this skinless feature just to "dispraise" someone's skins... it's about all those users who are never satisfied. If you leave them with skinless antivirus for few months without an option to choose between skins, I'm sure they will complain that avast! is too boring... I know that. If you give them 4 good skins, they will ask for more... always... If you make 16 different, all kind of  skins, they will say, avast! is not serious security program... it's child play... too many colorful skins, it's like circus. I know what I'm talking about, just take a look at all those comments on other forums... for example, Wilders. Vlk had to explain to one guy that he can not jujdge antivirus program by it's design... that guy said that avast! is not serious program just because he hates avast! spinning icon in system tray... I wouldn't even listen those comments... Cheers !

To Alwil team: I can't believe you made this for free   Users are always complaining and you did it for free...   Anyway, Sasha, you won't have all kinds of people pleased at the same time... Human nature  

About the professionalist and effectiveness of an application by it's GUI, well, no comments  

[Lisandro]

Would like to see some more technical explanation about the "Network Shield".

It will be on the help file I suppose:

New resident provider: Network Shield. It protects the computer from the attacks of Internet worms (e.g. Blaster, Sasser, etc.). It will show warning messages in the system area (above the system clock) every time it detects an Internet worm attack. There is a logging feature too: all attacks will be recorded into a log file so that you can inspect their history, frequency, etc. The last detected attacks will be displayed on the Last attacks page.

Network Shield provider will protect your computer from Internet worm attacks. It works similarly to a firewall, even though it does not fully substitutes it. The Network Shield does not require any user interraction. Note: This resident provider will be available on Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 only.

[nadirah]

I like to know about whether heuristics will be included in the new version. I wish to see heuristics in every part of the program. Heuristics will enable avast to catch more unknown viruses.