For me, my understanding of the "Settings -> Status Bar -> Virus definitions version". is that you are informed if the virus definitions are out of date, not that there is an update available.
Generally speaking, you are correct. They are "almost" the same.
Now what that duration is before it would be deemed to be out of date I have no idea. If you take the example of the WSC/WAC it is 7 days before they are considered out of date. You could test that theory by not updating for a couple of days, though that isn't risk free if your browsing habits are exotic.
DavidR, you are arriving to my point.
A new available database that has not been applied, "almost" means that you have already have an "out of date" database. Let's go ahead. Let's assume that "out of date" means that the latest applied database is 1 or 2 days old, and of course that there is already a new database available.
Why Avast would want to wait even more time to display the exclamation mark over Avast tray icon? As you said, there is
already a risk. There is no need to wait to the standard 7 days of Windows Security (Action) Center!
But even if that would be the case (I hope not), I just want someone from Avast Team to inform (here in this topic, or point me to the info elsewhere) which, exactly, is the behaviour a user should expect from this setting (or, more precisely, from #A and/or #B above)?
In addition, as I already mentioned, the behaviour seems to have changed in the latest program update to 6.0.1289.
"Manual" updates used to check for availability anyway, but now it doesn't. I'm perfectly fine with this change. Could some Avast Team member confirm this, please?
In addition, the "ask for confirmation" setting (#B above) should check for availability of updates. This is NOT working in the current 6.0.1289.
So now we have 2 settings not working correctly in 6.0.1289. I don't think I am asking such a big effort from Avast Team to confirm this problems, or to explain what should a user expect from these settings (in case I am misinterpreting them).