Avast 7 updating

I have been on Avast Free for sometime and have been comforted by the at least daily pop-up and friendly nice young lady telling me that my database has been updated. Now it seems that this no longer happens on my desktop (XP) but it does on my associated Laptop Win 7. Has an update set this up?

???

In each system, go to avast’s tray icon, right click → about avast.

Are both systems using the exact same program version and the same definitions version?