Hi there,
I’ve been using Avast 4 (the free version) for a long time now and really like it. So much that its also been adopted to the place I work (I’m a sysadmin) because of its versatility (naturally registered).
Now; because of the good deal on the website recently I licensed Avast 5 to be used on both my main PC and my laptop (all private stuff). While its excellent for my laptop I’m not really happy with it on my Windows PC. The versatility of version 5 has decreased quite dramatically when compared to 4.
The things which bug me the most are the real-time shields; although the program claims that you can turn some off permanently this actually isn’t the case. Sometimes I use the tray icon to temporarily turn off all shields whenever I notice that its delaying some important stuff (like a FTP download) or whenever I really cannot risk any delay at all (during a synthesizer recording for example). After which I use the same icon to turn the stuff back on. Version 5 makes this process a lot easier by presenting the “turn off for 10 minutes” option, but unfortunately it turns on all real-time shields again. This wasn’t the issue with 4; permanently disabled was just that.
So now I’m wondering if its possible and allowed to re-install 4 on my main PC while continuing to use 5 on my laptop, both using my 5 license ?
Though I like Avast I do think the changes in 5 aren’t always for the better. When looking at this solely from a sysadmin point of view I think you’re dropping all the advantages you had over other scanners. Take for example the boot on scan function. An excellent feature; scanning at a time where you don’t risk suspicious files being in use (or just marked as such, a commonly used trick). And the best part used to be that you could tell, up front, what to do. But most importantly: you could instruct it to ignore the Windows system files in its actions (like moving to the vault or deleting).
That’s no longer possible in 5. Sure, you can perform a bootscan; but I don’t think the boss will like it if cleaning sessions suddenly take up lots (double?) more time because whenever something is found the thing requires manual action these days.
We usually let it run; move the stuff to the vault and report on system files. Then at the end simply let a script go over the logs so that we had a clear view on what was infected and what not, and then take action accordingly.
I think 5 may disappoint a lot of professional users. Which can become quite tricky the moment when 4 becomes EOL’d.
Just my 2 cents though… Thanks in advance for any response.