Avast is the best free AV solution and at least top 5 paid solutions!
The Achilles’ heel of this antivirus is i believe his UI ! It can be improved!
My suggestions :
Log in, settings button, ?_X in the right corner on the main UI
Only one window for main UI , on demand scanner , virus chest , store and settings
In the main UI on top in the left "YOU ARE PROTECTED’’ panel and in the right ‘‘PAUSE PROTECTION’’ button then “YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED” and “RESUME PROTECTION”
On bottom update (on demand scan for signatures/ program updates only no details) ,scan,virus chest,tools and store buttons
In settings general,active protection,update (with all details but no signatures and program update buton) registration,trobleshooting and about
Personally this appears to be going back to the earlier avast UI (a.k.a Tiled, MS Metro/Modern and many AVs went for the same look), where it was possible to set commonly used function shortcuts.
We have been asking for an update on the avast tray icon context menu. This would actually bypass much of the need to go to the UI first. Update and Virus Chest are already there, but we feel there should be more common functions in this menu.
Why the need to bypass the UI ? I think is better and cleaner to have everything important in one UI window
Before scanning i want to update on more time for example and is faster to acces a shortcut on desktop bum everything in the UI rather than go on the avast tray icon right click and select update and then go to the interface to scan !
Silent/gaming mode from the avast tray icon is good but better to go on automatically when i open a game !
The main reason to bypass the UI is quite simply speed. Not to mention many functions were a several levels down.
I also see little point in running on demand scans, in a resident AV, active files would be scanned upon activity. For the most part an on-demand scan is going to be scanning inactive and dormant files.
Even if you are going to run an on-demand scan, with the streaming updates your virus definitions are going to pretty much up to date. The regular VPS updates for the most part contain the streaming updates previously received.
You don’t have to go to the UI to initiate the update, the context menu option initiates a direct update for either Engine and Virus definitions or Program (and opens the UI at that point).
If you are using full screen whilst gaming then it automatically defaults to silent/gaming mode.
To add to David’s comments, nearly all of the choices in the context menu (in the free version, anyway) are simply shortcut-links to the appropriate sub-page in the UI. For the kinds of things I do, it’s very rare that I need to open the UI … accessing Settings is one such case that comes to mind, and how often do I need that? 8)
