One of the reasons for so doing is this: in Indonesia download speeds are slow, and Avira downloads of virus updates were hanging up. The virus update file borders on 30 Mb. I am only on the net every two weeks or so and my second computer never is, so I rely on manual updates from internet cafes.
Why the hell is a “virus update file” as big as the installation itself? Why isn’t it of the order of 1 Mb or less???
And of course nobody in the west considers the needs of people in more remote areas where internet access is not blindingly fast!
Which version of avast! did you install? The update file for version 5.0.377 isn’t very big at all. Took me about 3-4 minutes on slow 3-4 Kbps connection. The full update file for 4.8 is around 32 MB.
There should be no need to do a manual install from the avast web site, that is really for systems which are off-line (no internet connection). If you have a connection, VPS Updates the virus signatures are automatic and are incremental; so you only get the updates that you have missed since the last update, these are usually measured in the KBs and not MBs.
I understand your frustration; in the military I was limited to online exposure once every month or so (being underway at sea).
Hope you get it worked out.
At any rate, I suspect that you are grabbing the entire virus database.
Instead of grabbing the whole thing (which is essentially giving you redundant data), try simply updating the virus definitions via the following commands:
Right click the system tray icon of Avast to bring up menu.
Select “update”, and click on “Engine and virus definitions”.
*NOTE: If you are using Avast-4 your menu option may be slightly different, but the gist is the same & should be fairly intuitive: open Avast systray icon properties, click on update, select update virus database (or something like that).
Good luck in your endeavor, and maybe look into using satellite internet uplink (still too rich for my blood, I’m afraid, ha ha). $1000 to $5000 USD (monthly, I assume), but hey, if you can get enough people together to pitch in, you could all share the bandwidth. To be honest, I really do not know very much about satellite internet, but it doesn’t hurt to look at options…
Avast refers only to version 4 and 5 on the net, on my computer the number given in my previous post.
I have tried avast and softpedia for just the virus definition update file. I would imagine that this tacks onto the exisiting older database on a computer, updating it; that the download is not the complete updated file.
Version 5, 29Mb - huge.
At present I can’t update the program through the net, or just update. No information about download speeds or file sizes.
What I do like about avast is the preboot scan - already cleaned up one problem. But what use given updating difficulties?
One of those situations where free software proves that you wouldn’t want to pay for it, I’m afraid. A common experience.
That’s how it is - if you’re online, the download sizes would be small (incremental). However, the offline update package contains the whole virus database, i.e. is rather big - and I don’t think it’s going to change.