This is it, I kept giving avast! a try in a hope they’ll fix the mess they made in the last year or two, but after seeing ongoing (current) trainwreck of broken product updates and functions, I’ll just stop bothering with avast! entirely. The product is unreliable, immature with continually mediocre protection performance and protection features that you just can’t rely on because their reliability is best described as “random”. Words I’d never dare to use in the past to describe avast!. Developers-users communication is pretty much non existent now and the whole company is apparently more concerned with counting the money and building new awesome headquarters over doing a quality product (I guess this is the downside of getting big financial shareholders who only care about profit at any cost and nothing else), something their whole existence is based upon. I don’t know what the hell happened, but this isn’t the company or a product I joined 12 years ago. No, I’m not an avast! employee, but I was a long time supporter, tester, bug reporter, community helper and this just isn’t avast! anymore. Hasn’t been for quite a while…
Farewell avast!. And good luck. You’ll going to need it…
immature with continually mediocre protection performance and protection features that you just can’t rely on because their reliability is best described as “random”.
That’s true.DeepScreen fails manytimes and "NG"Or “SVM” not installed after 2261 >:(.Most unfinished feature is HIPS.
While many other products have shown huge leaps in protection tests and done that with consistency, avast! just keeps stagnating at mediocre levels. Consistently.
New protection features constantly introduced that don’t really show any results to users. I mean, has anyone actually ever got protected by the “new” HIPS feature? I haven’t ever seen it do anything in any real world test done by any user. And whenever they introduce them, they are basically just a checkbox. It usually takes a year for them to actually become functional. And there is this damn NG thing. Continually broken, non functional and questionable. And even when it works, it seems like it doesn’t do much despite avast! team saying otherwise with their statistics. I’ve rarely seen it detect things. Where competitor technologies continuously show crazy good results. What really tipped me over was NG in build 2260 where it worked and then they released 2261 hotfix that broke it again. After waiting for months, I had a functional NG for 1 day. And now it’s broken again. :
I’ll be using something else and I won’t be hanging around here much. I mean, no point in supporting a program that you have very little confidence into.
Can’t really say that I disagree with your assessment. As a long time user (although not as long as you!) I also have seen the steady decline in the way avast has implemented new features, addressed customer concerns, and conducted themselves as a business. As you say, apparently money and profitability have become the number one item on the company’s agenda.
Although I haven’t totally given up on avast yet, I too have started to look at alternate AV’s.
Good luck on your search and thanks for all of your helpful posts in the past . . .
+1 @ Gandalf 1369. I , too, am currently looking elsewhere as avast has become so bloated with garbage having really nothing really relevant to do with hearty AV protection. At the same time Avast has become totally unreliable, something an AV simply cannot be, so I will also be gone soon.
Ultimately, I hope hope Avast will gather itself up so I can return, but it is very doubtful with money hungry scoundrels now in charge of company.
Sadly this is all too common when corporate raiders buy out smaller companies, something I do not to expect to see changed in my lifetime.
see ya (not) avast and good luck to those who continue to be sucked in by Avast,s aggressive and tricky dick advertising.
sincerely,
Skinnypops
So sad to see you go away RejZor. You will be missed :'(. In the past I have been using many different antivirus some/both on and off and some are free and paid i.e. McAfee, Norton, MSE, Panda Cloud Antivirus. I finally choose to use Avast! Free. I never had a problem using Avast and so I guess I will stick to it. Good luck RejZor hope you install a better antivirus.
I only have avast (free cloud) on a old Windows XP SP3 system that doesn’t support SSE2 and a tablet.
On my other systems I stepped away from avast a couple years back already.
They are running Kaspersky.
About two years ago I have had contact with several of the programmers and they weren’t exactly happy with the decisions that where made.
It would not surprise me if they still aren’t happy.
People, this is the start of the downfall of Avast. If well known old Avast forum veterans say they will, or have already, moved away from Avast, then it’s shit-hits-the-fan time for Avast.
With broken heart i will now move for Avira as a free or Eset as a paid.AVIRA has shown a reliable top notch track record. And isn’t all broken like avast!.
Unless something (else) goes wrong I’ll stay with Avast for now. I deselect most thins, so running are the 3 shields and Browser Protection (not sure about that one…).
I’d stayed with v9 until Win 7 Pro was up and running. Now 1261 seems to be OK (touch wood!) and the promised quicker start does seem to happen - hey, 1 out of 10 ain’t bad
What upsets me is that Avast used to be one of the best-functioning programmes available (along with ProperOpera); I could install Beta and RCs with confidence. Now I read a few pages of posts re. a new version then, with much trepidation, try it and hope
What about other people who share the same opinion of the direction Avast has chosen and have many of the same problems? Don’t they deserve the same opportunity to be part of the discussion?
This has been by “rants” for awhile now…most of my PCs still on V9 because I cannot “trust” the releases coming from Avast.
Not sure which scares me more…new A/V program releases that break more than they fix or silent installs with forced reboots of my PCs that have security holes and can bork my machine.
You hit the nail on the head…the priorities of Avast have changed…it is very evident…if you want to see a company that develops/documents/releases/protects the proper way look at how MalwareBytes is running…very well done and the highest of credibility. Funny thing is…I’ve been a Avast “FREE” user for years and the thing that prevents me from paying for other parts of their products is most of it is cr@pware and I can find other products online that are free or I pay one-time lifetime fee for that simply work. Ironically, I’d pay for JUST Avast’s A/V if I was assured it was clean, rolled out with proper documentation (not just hand full BETA testers which while I applaud their efforts seem to be more of Avast’s “Alpha” testers), and all the other bundled crud was firewalled from the clean running A/V. I’ve said it before and will say it again…Avast sees their large “install” base as a untapped cash-cow and just like insurance companies or Vegas casinos they are betting they can make more money from the “masses” while being able to absorb the collateral damage of statistically the small user base they tick off and push away…it’s a #s game to them. The cold fact is that is true…but not forever…just look at Symantec…but as I’ve seen in most companies the Execs don’t care about that because it’ll take years before things really start falling off and by then they’ve made their money and are gone to retirement or another company…only to leave the wreckage behind.
It is sad…I have not given up on Avast totally yet…as long time user I’m hanging on to V9 until I can hopefully see a solid V11/12/13 that works with W10 without risk of forced crud.
However, I think the advent of other A/Vs now working on integrated anti-crypto may be my jumping off point with Avast…time will tell…but time is definitely ticking down.
For me while I stick around and “wait” (hope) I enjoy helping where I can on the Forum…I feel a sense to help when PCs do get borked…I know how painful and hopeless the average user can feel at that point. Over the years seeing folks like RejZoR/Bob3160/Essexboy/Asyn/Eddy/DavidR/others help motivates me to stick in here and help where/when I can.
