Avast Internet Security (Beta)
Bob Adkins
Avast now has a complete "Internet Security" suite. Check out the
screen shots. The Gui looks slick and intuitive. Avast has come a
long way since the horrible GUI's of a year ago.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Avast-Internet-Security.shtml
Haven't tried it, but the reviews are good. SoftSea gave it 5 stars,
even as a beta.
Bob Adkins
WHOOPS!!! Mia clupa!
"SoftSea Editor's Note: During the initial beta period only, the
software is free. The license of this antivirus & security software is
Freeware, you can free download and free use this Antivirus & Security
software."
In my defense, Softpedia and SoftSea called it "Freeware" until I dug
up this disclaimer. The beta actually IS free, but nobody knows how
long it will stay free. It could be several months.
Oh well!
Happy New Year!
VanguardLH
Alas, one feature that is getting dropped in version 5 is their URL blocker
that is part of their Web Guard. Their parsing has some, um, "unique"
properties that result in blocking on the wrong domains. Although they
claim to support the * and ? [DOS] wildcard characters, don't ever use the ?
wildcard. It will also match on the end-of-string. "ad?.msn.com" would
match on "microsoft.com/download" because the ? would match on the "ad" at
the end of the URL string. Stupid but that's a defect in their parsing.
Although they don't support regex to provide more accurate URL blocking
strings, it was still useful for eliminating not only content from spam
domains but would also match on substrings in the URL (so I could check in
other than the domain portion of the URL, like for "/adframe". Rather than
fix this URL blocking feature (and adding regex to make it more usable),
they are dropping it altogether. It was apparent from their forum responses
and their replies to my e-mails that they really didn't want to support URL
blocking and they announced they will discontinue it in v5.
v5 will also drop the VRDB feature. This was a integrity database of hash
values for scanned files, saving up to a history of 3 copies, to facilitate
their product in disinfecting a file. It has something it would know about
the structure of the file before it was infected to better handle modifying
that same file at a later time to reconstruct it (without the pest). My
deciphering of their statements is that it really wasn't that helpful in
disinfection of files although they kept touting that feature. They claimed
it help repair the infected files. Apparently that wasn't true or they came
up with a better scheme. Or maybe they got sick of users complaining about
the impact of Avast on their hosts was worse than for some other AV
products, and disabling VRDB reduces the impact in responsiveness on a host.
Anything they can to improve the UI will be a boon to proliferating their
software. Many users complained about having 2 different interfaces: one
which was the config UI and then the separate "program" UI that actually did
any work.
I'm wondering if Avast is still going to stick users of their free version
with the mandatory 14-month registration. You had to register to use the
free version. The registration sent you the key to unlock the free version.
The registration lasted 14 months after which you had to get whatever was
the latest current version and install that one (if you didn't notified
earlier about a new product version). I'd prefer their auto-update function
to simply tell me when there was a new product version and let me decide
whether or not to install it and when rather than get stuck with a self-
terminating free version.
Michael Rainey
"Yrrah" <Yrra...@acf.invalid> wrote in message
news:601sj5tha3dtntkd4...@net.com...
> Bob Adkins <m...@pit.com>:
>
>> In my defense, Softpedia and SoftSea called it "Freeware" until I dug
>> up this disclaimer. The beta actually IS free, but nobody knows how
>> long it will stay free. It could be several months.
>
> means that a company wants free beta testers. Pehaps they regard
> people as freeware :-(.
>
> Yrrah
>
> --
> Some of the best of the best in Freeware
> http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/
>
The company has provided a very valuable free service for years. Cut them a
little slack.
responder
freeware programs out there. Even if they are just a stepping stone to
motivate one to buy another version, I have been immersed in computers
and their construction and software for ~20 years and have used and
appreciated all the freeware I came across..
I constantly read in virtually every forum and newsgroup about those who
think it's coming to them and can't wait to complain about some glitch
or other. No justice, I suppose..
I'm sure my post and thoughts will be flamed, but so what.