system
8
I get few alerts from Avast. Most have been from their Web Shield when web surfing. But think about it: if you get few alerts, it’s unlikely that you need to take care of the rare ones at the time they occur. I don’t know how you use your computer but mine are busy all the time. Getting a security alert does NOT take priority over other real work in which I am currently engaged. The popup won’t stay around forever (and would get in my way if it did). There is nothing in Avast to let me interrogate what it is blocking at a later time when I can elect to expend the time and effort to investigate their alert and what action they chose (which was NOT the action that I wanted).
You are using 2 computers. What about someone that has a dozen of them in or by their desk? They’d look pretty silly running around to check the hosts everytime they heard a beep. You think it wise to interrupt your real work to go respond to security alerts which may or may not be bogus and that may or may not be critical? If an alarm went off on your watch or Blackberry telling you a meeting was starting now while you were sitting on the toilet, would you really hike up your pants to leave without first wiping yourself? Just because someone or something issues an alert doesn’t mean you have to react immediately. I’m not Pavlov trained. I also don’t interrupt more important work or be impolite during discussions because my cell phone happened to ring. If you don’t prioritize then someone or something else will do it for you.
Security alerts get low priority. I finish my current tasks or wait until I get to an interruption point of my choosing before getting to the lower priority tasks. If you let the low priority tasks determine your schedule, you’ll never get the important stuff done.
When you come back later to Avast to see on what it is currently blocking, were do YOU look? The log won’t tell you. It records events, not a blocking list. What’s in the chest isn’t all of what Avast is blocking access. There are probably good reasons why Avast hides in the registry or in files on what it is blocking but that doesn’t mean the information should be hidden in its UI. It was after I elected to get back to Avast to see on what it was blocking that I realized the UI was incomplete or clumsy.