I have a client who has a paid-for copy of Avast 4.8 Professional that expired yesterday. I’m still not comfortable with 5.0 (it’s still crashing on its own on my XP SP3 system), and I suggested she stick with 4.8 until the bugs are worked out of 5.0.
When she started through the renewal process for her license, everything she sees implies that she has to upgrade to 5.0. I even searched the Avast website for “renew license” – that still takes me to 5.0 pages.
It’s a business system – it wouldn’t be right to have her use the free version. Up until 5.0, I’ve always felt Alwil/Avast was the best option for antivirus – small footprint, auto updates, it just plain works (other than the “false positive” problem back in December).
With 5.0, I’ve lost confidence in their software. I’ve been running 5.0 here, upgraded from 5.0.377 to 5.0.396, and it’s still crashing on me. Red “X” on the avast ball, the service has died, no log viewer to speak of, and it DOESN’T communicate properly with Windows Security Center to alert the user that there’s a problem.
I can’t recommend she (or my many other clients) upgrade at this point.
She needs some kind of antivirus solution – maybe AVG is the way to go, but I’ve read good things about the Micro$oft AV, too.