Is it me, or are the scan speeds faster?
It seems as if avast! scans more MB/second than before.
It’s not only you. 
What version of Avast are you speaking about? And what is the difference in speed?
I have Avast Free 6.0.1.1198 on Vista SP2. The quick scan has just checked 50 Gb of files for 12 minutes (70 Mb in a second).
So, now Avast doesn’t check video files, does it?
Yep. But consider:
Since all of this logic is updated with the VPS, we can switch it on anytime if needed (for example if some very bad exploit gets discovered).
Since all of this logic is updated with the VPS, we can switch it on anytime if needed (for example if some very bad exploit gets discovered).I think it's not enough. To my mind it would be beter if Avast add a "Deep Scan" with checking video to usual Quick and Full Scans.
I have 6.0.1198 on a Windows 7 x64 and the speeds are faster.
The performance increase was put out through the vps updates to improve the scanning engine so we all get the improvement, not just the beta.
If you don’t feel it is enough, then use a custom scan and bump up the volume.
I honestly haven’t seen any appreciable/noticeable difference from the last pre-release version. But I don’t have large media stores and I don’t have a lot of data on my system. Quick scan just took 3.00 minutes for only 4.9GB and if anything that is much slower that with the last 6.0.1125/1184 builds. But it is hard to say as I don’t know if on the new program update any persistent cache is rebuilt.
Running the Quick scan right away does make a difference, 2:18 minutes for 4.9GB. Which is pretty much back where the previous builds were.
no video on C: here so that won’t make any difference (for the quick scan). Anyway I had no idea that videos were skipped now in preset scans… it’s been a while since I don’t pay much attention to scheduled scans, they just run in the background. Okay good to know anyway.