Avast Home Edition Overview

Avast Home Edition – Free Antivirus 4.8.1367 features outstanding integration into your system. A scan can be started directly from Windows Explorer, by clicking a folder or a file with your right mouse button and selecting the corresponding choice from the menu. The all-new Avast brings important changes to the app’s visual appearance. The old metal-like interface and classic Windows XP configuration menus have been replaced by a much more modern and shiny design that resembles other popular antivirus tools. The new interface is way more informative than the previous one and lets you check the system’s security status at a glance. Also, all the program’s tools and options are neatly displayed on a left-side animated pane, instead of being buried in menus.
The latest version of Avast Home Edition features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses. The Virus Chest can be thought of as a folder on your disk drive, having special properties that make it a safe, isolated place suitable for storing certain files. User can work with the files in the Chest, though with some security restrictions. The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system. No outside process, such as a virus, may access the files inside, and the fact that the files inside the Chest may not be run (executable), there is no danger in storing viruses there.
Avast Home Edition – Free Antivirus 4.8.1367 features a module for the protection of IM (Instant Messaging, “chat”) programs, and a module for the protection of P2P (peer-to-peer) programs. The list of supported IM and P2P programs is extensive with more than 30 programs currently supported.The P2P protection module doesn’t need much explanation – on today’s P2P networks (such as Kazaa) there are thousands of infected files, and an effective protection is a must.

Main features

Antivirus kernel
Virus Chest
Automatic updates
Standard resident protection
Simple User Interface

New Features

Support for 64-bit Windows
Integrated Avast! Virus Cleaner
Web & Network Shield
P2P and IM Shields

What We Found

After a few years without major updates, the popular Avast Home Edition – Free Antivirus 4.8.1367 has gone under a complete overhaul. A special screen-saver is also provided, that, when running, performs virus scanning. It works together with your favorite screen-saver, so you don’t have to change your personal settings to use it.
The Avast engine also features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside the following archives: ARJ, ZIP, MIME (+ all associated formats), MAPI (Outlook pst files), DBX (Outlook Express archives), RAR, TAR, GZIP, CAB, BZIP2, ZOO, ACE, ARC, LHA/LHX, TNEF (winmail.dat), CPIO, CHM, RPM, ISO, 7ZIP and SIS. It also supports a number of executable packers (such as PKLite, Diet, UPX, ASPack, PeShield, FSG, MEW etc.)
But changes in Avast are not limited to the interface and the program’s layout. There are also interesting new tools such as highly detailed analysis stats, a silent mode that prevents the program from displaying desktop notifications and a few visual and performance tweaks. Another outstanding new utility is the so called Behavior shield, which monitors your system in real time and warns you in case any suspicious behavior is detected.
Avast Home Edition – Free Antivirus 4.8.1367 also includes other more common features in antivirus software, like the possibility to choose between different scanning modes, filters to exclude certain folders from scanning and support for scheduled updates.