I dislike avast! 8 and 9 (It's critical!)

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi! I’ll talk about some bullshit. And the more useres keep posting comments on this topic, the faster they will fix avast!. It’s important!
Since Avast! 5 till 7 it was the perfect antivirus software I must say! But, I don’t know what happened to the avast! engineers. They seem very lazy since the avast! 8. On several computers I tested this avast! software, didn’t even boot. I had to delete the software in the safemode. I couldn’t uninstall it! I had to download the avastcleaber. WHY DON’T YOU REPLACE the avast uninstall feature with the avastcleaner tool?
Ok, you’ve fixed this bug after a half year. A half year!!!
Avast! 2014, since the update v9.0.2011, I can’t turn off my computer. I had to turn it off hard twice! Because it freezes after log off with a black screen and you can do what you want. But the funny thing is, when I updated avast to v9.0.2011. I didn’t restart right after because I had things to do. When I’ve noticed this problem, the first thing I thought about that causes it was avast! Because I remember the big problems of avast 8! And many had this problem and some even still have this problem.

The avast! 2014 design is completely confusing you can’t find a thing. I see that as a DOWNGRADE, and not in a nice way! :frowning: And there are still some features that I can’t find. For example, the browser plugins if I want them to reinstall. Because if you delete them from your browser, they’re gone permanently. But since the update v9.0.2011, I even had to deactivate this plugins, because it was impossible slow to surf.

I will not user avast till the next year. And I mean 2015. I will not recommend avast to anyone anymore till 2015. When you release avast 2015 I will try it again. I know you’re a good team, but you WERE BETTER! And I know you can become better again!

I didn’t mention the which windows it was, I had this problems on all actually. Please before you release the update, test it on the windows you support it!!! And please replace or improve the update as the uninstall feature! Because this is bullshit and it is scaring the users who don’t know about computers that much.

Since the avast! 5 I really thought there’s no where but up! Since Avast 8 I was dissapointed, many who I recommendet this antivirus were upset! And you’re talking big everywehre to “share it with your friends”. What for? Crush their computers? Because that’s what it’s doing right now. :(((((

FIX IT! And please fix the Verification: on the comments, nobody can read this crap.

2

everybody has a right for his/her own opinion. However such generic comments won’t help much to make this product better. If we’d be able to reproduce your problem in our environment then it’s almost fixed.
What helps are dumps, logs and comments addressing particular issue. We are receiving such feedback from experienced users on this forum. This community help improves the product. General comments don’t.

3

I second the motion! The removal tool for ALL previous versions needs to be built into the avast! installers. As a reseller, this is the #1 avast! issue since version 4!

Sincerely,

J.R. “AutoSandbox Guy” Guthrie

“At this point in time, the Internet should be regarded as an Enemy Weapons System!”

4

I will comment that the User Interface of Avast 9 is going backwards…even from 8.
Everyone is in such a mode to emulate Windows 8 or Apple with all the tiles.
Sometimes programs/software needs true “menus” to be well organized.
IHMO Avast 8 skated on that edge of acceptability and Avast 9 fell off the cliff.
Does it mean I wil not use Avast ?..of course not…I will…when I open the console…I go “now where was xxxx ???”.

5

The user interface of Avast! is still a DESKTOP application.

As such it ought to have the look and feel of a DESKTOP application. Title bars and borders around windows aren’t evil. What’s evil/stupid/arrogant is to make every application have its own look and feel, and ignore the theme of the desktop. However bad Microsoft is making the desktop look in Windows 8, the Avast UI makes it worse!

Perhaps Avast! has delusions of making their product a Metro/Modern application. While that would be a ridiculously bad idea, if you do so please wait to change the UI THEN.

-Noel

6

I’m with lukas on this one. Can’t figure out what the OP is ranting about.
Lot’s of words that don’t say anything worthwhile. ???

7

Wow the avast team agrees with the avast team. ::slight_smile:

8

Para-Noid is not from the avast! team. He’s a user like us but has been helping the community for long. It’s a forum rank…

9

The one thing I dislike about avast 2014 is the sick looking icon in the system tray. At least 7 and 8 had something that looked decent. I wonder if all this flat business is being required by Microsoft. I think it stinks.

10

comment from Lukas

This community help improves the product.

It was good to hear from you. I would like to make a comment as a long time user and daily viewer of the forum. As was mentioned, the volunteers in the forum play an important roll in the development and maintenance of the avast base.

But sometimes though it seems they are running blind. Questions are being raised repeatedly by various posters about certain topics and they are left to speculate as to what the possible problem, and or solution, may be. This leads to frustration and sometimes animosity from some of the posters directed at the volunteers or Avast itself. (the pop up issue is one recent example)

Certainly you guys are busy, but it seems that you monitor the forum to a certain extent. I believe Vlk is still with the organization. Years ago he, among others, would monitor the forum and if a question should arise, or if they wanted to clarify some advice that was being given, they would respond in a timely manner. This was very helpful and always appreciated by those in the forum. There seems to be much less of that now.

I’m sure time is an issue, but in my opinion as a user of Avast software, a short response here and there when it would clarify things would have a positive effect on the user base.

11

To expand on what jwa has said, and speaking as an expert from a different forum elsewhere…

If Avast! officials would comment - even just once - on an important subject (e.g., the pop-up advertising bug, or the failure to update because the emergency updater is stuck bug, etc.), the experts who hang out here can then pass that information along. Everyone benefits.

A good example of where a big company participates well is the Adobe Photoshop forum. Now and again there are bona fide problems that show up, and people ask about them again and again. Thing is, the Adobe engineers DO speak to the issues, then we who hang out there to help can pass that information along to others when they ask.

Users love nothing more than to hear “the company knows about it and is working on it, the root cause is xxxx, and a workaround is yyyy”. Expert users can even pass along the link to the original response.

You Avast people obviously know about the problems. The investment to get a response out to the user base is not high, and it does no one any good to pretend that the product is bug-free when it’s not.

-Noel

12

If the program would work in long term test I wouldn’t really talk about the design of avast. But the avast engineers seem a little bit lazy to test the update first on all windows versions you support this program before release.

I never had that kind of serious problems with AVG or Avira. I don’t expect much from a freeware product. But that’s painful to watch if I see my pc doesn’t boot or I can’t turn it off normal anymore…

I had to wait a half year till avast fixed this no boot issue on some windows versions. A half year! Should I wait a half year for a fix that I can turn off my computer normal again? No thanks! I’m tired. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll see if I try it again someday, but at the moment I’m tired of avast.

13

Sorry to say there are some arrogant Avast team members here. The OP is making several very serious points, please don’t gret uppity about it, instead understand and pass the issues on to engineers and designers.

I would like to recommend that Avast take a lead and instead of converting all their GUI to Windows 8, they only build a Win 8 style product for Win 8 installations. Then return to the style and feautures of version 7 for Win 7 installations.

You surely need to understand two things -

  1. Windows 7 is going to be around until at least 2020, that’s another 6 long years, and you need to look after that huge group of customers.
  2. Your long faithful customers will leave you if you keep ignoring them and forcing them into Win 8 style apps on Windows 7 desktop.

I am a paying customer of the Pro product and I feel that the company has ignored my needs and is not listening, instead merely following the Windows 8 tile fashion regardless of the majority of its clients being on Win 7 or earlier.

14

What avast! “team” members? Only team meber here is lukas. Everyone else are regular forum users. Evangelists are just long time supporters, nothing else.

As for the Win8 GUI, why? Why follow the obsession with stupid tiles like everyone do? If you’re using Windows 8, fine. But i hope you do realize that avast! also works on Win7, WinVista and WinXP in which case, tiled GUI looks idiotic because it doesn’t connect with those OS’s at all.

If you ask me, current GUI is by far the best in all avast! history. avast! 4.x was very confusing for most, skinned main panel, normal settings panel, separate advanced menus and separate simple menus, bunch of shields etc. Then version 5.x sort of consolidated simple and advanced settings but there were still plenty of shields that were confusing to many. Version 8 didn’t actually solve anything, in fact, from the fedback i got was even slightly more confusing because they’ve added horizontal tabs along with vertical sidebar. But version 9 (2014) got it right. Basically all the settings from version 8 are there, but when you open the interface, it’s not overwhelming. It serves just important features directly to the user and those settings that don’t require frequent access are hidden away in deeper levels of GUI (under settings). And that’s how it should be and how it is. Casual users don’t get overwhelmed by all the features and advanced users still have them there. This is a very difficult task to achieve and they’ve done it very well for v2014. It’s sort of has a hint of Win8, but doesn’t follow it entirely like many did.

@PhaseDev
Have you ever actually designed a program that is then used by 200 million users? avast! team can test their updates all months long on all Windows builds and it wouldn’t make any noticeable difference. Why? It is in fact very unlikely that in 200 million systems, 3 of them were identical to every single bit. There will always be something different, something that may or may not cause problems. You test the program to extent where you don’t get any reports from the internal and external beta testers and then you release it. That’s how everyone do and that’s the only way they can do it. When reports come back from regular users, they sort that out as it goes. There is no way of doing it any other way.

@lukas
My main concern is still mandatory avast! registration that is still by far the biggest problem for most users and no matter how you guys simplify it, there are always users that don’t know what to do with it and i also don’t have time to babysit everyones systems.

I just want avast! Free to:

  • work continuously year after year without silly re-registration
  • auto update program version by itself if i set it to do so (so far i’ve seen many outdated versions even though they should be updated)
  • auto update signatures
  • protect the user and deal with threats automatically without any silly complicated popups

Because first two conditions don’t meet my requirements i often have to install competitive antiviruses to such systems because i just can’t constantly keep an eye on those systems. But i know that those competitive programs don’t require re-registrations, they just work and also auto update forever. And that’s how avast! Free should also work. I don’t see any point in re-registration. It serves no purpose at all apart from confusing poor clueless users. In the past they said it’s for statistical data on users, but with Streaming Updates repeatedly sending active user status to their servers, they can calculate userbase from that. So why still have this nonsense around?

You can still ask user if he wants to upgrade to paid product once a year, but you don’t have to force users to use crapyp registration process. If they dismiss that popup, avast! should just continue working. But now, if you don’t re-register, avast! stops updating and that’s a very bad scenario. Especially since i know how users can cancel “annoying” notifications for weeks just to get them off their screen, not even bothering that they are screaming to re-register so antivirus will continue to work.

This is by far the biggest issue i’ve seen in years and it really needs to be seriously redesigned. I don’t care how paid version works, after all you have to pay yearly for that. But free is free, so why complicate things if you don’t need to?

15

+1 … Exactly right. 8)

16

Only thing I don’t like about V9 is that there is no “last update attempt” for VPS updates like in previous versions.

17

In this case, Avast comes almost as producers of open source software, that is, the community offers help with completion of its new product. However, unlike the producers of open source software, which, along with the beta-version is left available for download the latest stable version of its product, Avast does not leave users no alternative. That is - Download unstable version and help us refine it , or give up our product. Want to hope that the product will be finalized until such time as the majority of users will not abandon Avast in favor of a competing product. Marketing miscalculation could kill Avast.

18

For what it’s worth it doesn’t “connect” with much else provided by Windows 8.1 on the DESKTOP either. The only thing that’s gone kind of the same way is the newest version of Office - which also turns out to be usability-reduced because of it!

There’s still a theme and there are still standard desktop window elements, and EVERYTHING supplied with the Windows 8 OS uses them. There are 3rd party products now that even return Aero Glass, which make the Windows 8 desktop much more useful. Avast stands out like a sore thumb on such a setup.

-Noel