When it goes to be launched a new version of avast, or update of program?
At first should be BETA version realeased. It should be announced in BETA forum. When after some time final version comes… 
avast! is continually in development (that is the nature of av software, you can’t stand still and rest on your laurels) adding and improving the providers to better protect the users.
When it goes to be launched 4.7 version or superior? E would be very good if avast had one firewall, and a detector of spywares, riskwares and others.
Personally, I would prefer If a Firewall was not part of avast!
Unless you have a team who understand all the security issues involved, you’ll end up with a substandard product, that will reflect badly on the main prog(no matter how good it is).
Personally, I have all the processes bar the Standard, P2P and email scanner terminated - and I don’t actually know why I have the P2P shield on! A good standard shield should encompass most of the other areas, and be all that’s needed - everything else seems … gimmicky(?) to me, anyway.
Personally, I would prefer If a Firewall was not part of avast!FULLACK! Regards Housi
If a firewall is released, it will not be a standard part of avast! antivirus. It’s certainly not because our team wouldn’t understand the necesary security issues :P, but I think a “standalone” firewall, playing nicely together with avast! (possibly integrating some features) would be better.
lister, you are not completely right about Standard Shield catching everything. Some exploits (web browser, e-mail, …) may be executed right inside of the affected client, without having been written to disk first. So, while P2P Shield and Instant Messaging providers are indeed somehow duplicate (they are meant for cases when the Standard Shield is set to a lower sensitivity, i.e. when created files are not scanned), it is not completely true for e-mail scanner and Web Shield.
This has been discussed a many of times in the past and the general consensus is we don’t want avast to become bloatware like some other products that users have left to be avast users.
A term Jack of all trades, Master of none comes to mind, personally I prefer programs that specialise in one area. That way you can mix and match to get the best possible protection/performance, a single multi task option doesn’t give that flexibility.
Please do not integrate any kind of firewall into avast. Every anti-virus developer who has done this has turned out a product which is less effective and more unstable. I abandoned Norton way back and then PC-cillen because they went this route. I like my ZA (free) and router which when combined with avast has kept my system clean for more than 5 years ( 
touch wood :)).
Similarly do not try to integrate any other level of “protection” such as anti-spyware or you’ll end up with the same result.
Ok, good to know. Thanks!
I have the standard shield set to high anyway.So, as per your suggestion, I’ll Turn off the P2P and activate the webshield (I take it the script blocking is for IE (& variants) only?)
Has the Avast/ZoneAlarm incompatibility reported by Vik on 24 February been fixed yet?
If the only solutions still available are fiddling with proxy server settings or downloading a beta version of Avast I think I’ll have to switch to AVG anti-virus for the time being, since I don’t have the technical competence to handle any other problems these work-arounds might throw up and I need to have anti-virus AND firewall working together right now and not waste more of my time seeking solutions.
Any comments?
when you download the program update it checks to see if you have ZA installed, then asks if you want to disable the transparent proxy in the webshield in order to work with ZA.
Just say yes/ok.
I have all my ZoneAlarm Free 5.5.094.000 settings as high as I can. My Avast! Home 4.6.665 settings are on high. Other than that all settings on both are default. I have Windows XP Home SP2. I have no problems with either. They work together great.
The only ZoneAlarm Free 5.5.094.000 setting that I can’t set on high is Program Control. It is on medium as that is the highest for the free version.
I´m using Free version/ newest of ZA and first I clicked “yes” when downloading was process and then somebody said that it would be better to say “no”. So I changed that option after installing from Avast! ini.file and everything has been fine.
All good, but improves the detection of avast, or either, a deep and fast sweepings but.