Avast Antivirus 4.7 Professional Edition

CNET Editors' Rating 6.5/10 Good Editorial policies >>

Product Summary

The good: Avast Antivirus 4.7 Professional edition includes a second, more advanced user interface, on-demand virus and program updates, and the ability to make Avast scans a lower priority.

The bad: Avast Antivirus 4.7 Professional edition lacks important tools found in other antivirus products, such as antirootkit protection, antispyware, and antiphishing protection.

The bottom line: Avast Antivirus 4.7 Professional edition is OK but doesn't include some security features found in other antivirus products on the market today.

Specs: License type: Complete package See full specs >>

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Robert Vamosi
Edited by: Jim Hoffman
Reviewed on: 05/03/2007
Released on: 01/25/2007

Alwil is a Czech Republic security vendor that has been quietly producing Avast Antivirus for many years. There are two versions, Avast Antivirus Home edition, which is free and simplified, and Avast Antivirus Professional edition, which is paid and includes more advanced settings as well as additional features. In general, we were pleased with both editions. However, Avast lacks some important tools found in other antivirus products, such as antirootkit protection, antispyware, and antiphishing protection, leaving you vulnerable in these areas. Also, the home edition runs in the 60-day trail mode until you register the product, a registration that will have to renewed each year afterward.

Setup

We downloaded the 14.27MB file and installed the product in a matter of minutes. The 60-day trial is full function, which is good. After 60 days, you'll have to pay the $39.95 for a one-year subscription. There is a free version available, Avast Antivirus Home Edition.

After installation you must reboot. Before Windows reloads, Avast performs a boot-level antivirus scan, looking for malware that might load with the operating system. The program then uses pop-up balloons to explain the new icons on your task tray.

Should you decide to uninstall Avast, there is no uninstall icon. You will need to use All Programs > Controls Panel > Add or Remove Programs within Windows to remove it from your system. After a reboot, we found that several empty file folders under Program Files as well as several registry entries remained behind.

Interface

Upon launch, Avast initiates a memory and start-up scan of your system. You will also encounter a rather garish but nonetheless helpful screen explaining the Simplified User Interface. In the professional edition there are two interfaces. The simplified interface is stylish and designed for the end-user who just wants the PC to be protected; this interface is the only interface available in the free home edition. The second interface is more advanced with virtually no creative design; it is available only in the professional edition. Ultimately, though, we think having the two interfaces is clunky and would prefer a better design in future releases.

The "simplified" Avast Antivirus user interface is sleek, stylized, and also skinnable.

Yet beneath the brushed chrome, there are still menu options and standard features to choose from.

Features

What's included in the Professional edition that you won't find in the free Home version are push updates (meaning that Alwil will deploy high-priority changes to your program rather than you requesting them or waiting for the next automatic update), a script blocker (a heuristic to analyze javascript and Active X), custom tasks (such as setting Avast to run whenever your screensaver kicks in), a scheduler, and a command-line scanner (for initiating scans at a C: prompt, for example). Whether these features are worth the extra cash is up to you.

The Enhanced User Interface gives you more options and will be the default of more advanced users.

Most useful within the paid edition is a second, more advanced user interface. The Enhanced User Interface features include on-demand virus updates, program and virus updates, and Go To Background, which throttles back to low priority the resources used by Avast Antivirus so you can work in Excel or any other application without latency.

Included in both the Home and Professional editions are the basic antivirus kernel, automatic updates, and P2P and IM shields for blocking viruses transmitted other than via infected Web sites and e-mail.

Included in both is the Virus Recovery Database (VRDB), which captures information about the current state of a given file and saves that information for as many as three versions back. That way, if your system gets infected with a virus, Avast can roll back the infected file to a previous, uninfected version. In general, we found when VRDB was running that it zapped our system resources from time to time, so we turned it off.

What's missing in both editions is explicit protection from rootkits, a major security concern these days. Also, most antivirus products include some antispyware protection, but not Avast. Next, though it would be optional, it would be good to have antiphishing tools included as McAfee and others are doing with their antivirus products. And, of course, a firewall would also be nice.

Performance

Although we have not scheduled Avast Antivirus for formal benchmark testing through CNET Labs, we did find in informal testing that Avast Antivirus used no more than 10 percent of our system resources during a number of different scans--a fairly light performance hit. However, we did find that when generating the VRDB, Avast soared into the 40 percent system resources territory.

To determine how well a product will protect your PC, we refer to test results from two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, Avast Antivirus 4.7 earned an Advanced rating (the second highest), catching 93 percent of all malware tested. The other source, Checkvir.com, did not evaluate Avast Antivirus 4.7 2006.

Support

Alwil is located in the Czech Republic. There is a comprehensive in-program help menu. There are also robust technical support forums, free e-mail support, and international telephone support, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central European Time.

Conclusion

We were pleasantly surprised by the Home edition and less so by the Professional edition. We hope that future releases of Avast include protection against rootkits, spyware, and possibly, phishing.