Avast: Powerful Anti-Virus Protection

Are you in need of an easy anti-virus solution that will guard your PC? Don't forget that spam message that's claiming to be an important security update, trying to sway you into running the attached .EXE file. With so many computer viruses swarming around in the wild, a good anti-virus solution can mean the difference between early virus detection and removal and complete data annihilation.

If you're running a version of Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows, then heed the warning that your computer is the #1 target for all virus authors wishing your PC an early demise.

There's a multitude of commercial anti-virus applications on the market, but, in my opinion, most of them have annoying quirks that motivated my search for a better virus solution program. When I happened upon Avast, I was skeptical at first; essentially, Avast Home Edition's free edition my skepticism.

My doubts were soon quashed after an easy installation, and Avast was sitting quietly in my system tray, standing guard against any malicious code that could infect my computer.

The cool thing about a default installation of Avast is that it takes care of everything for you. There's little manual intervention involved.

Avast takes care of the ritual update of its virus definitions--which is extremely important if you wish your PC to be protected against the latest threats--and it also scans each email that gets pulled from Thunderbird, my email client, scanning each attachment as it comes in. If a threat is detected inside an attachment, Avast will allow you to decide what you want to do with the exploit.

Manual Scanning

Before running an installation program, or unzipping a compressed file, one should always scan the contents of said packages. Avast will conveniently place an option to perform a virus scan; right select on a file or folder will pop up a context menu with an option to run Avast.

Now, Avast can sometimes be the silent type, so you may see a virus scan window appear then disappear very quickly; don't worry, nothing went wrong. Avast just didn't detect any threats and has deemed it safe to run the program. If a virus were detected, Avast will provide you with several options, including one to leave the file alone. It's always recommended that you let Avast delete all detected threats to keep your computer in good health.

Options and Settings

A default right-out-of-the-box installation of Avast is the best way to keep your PC safe. But you may want to alter and calibrate some of its settings and features. To access Avast's settings dialog box, double tap on its icon (a sphere with an "a") located in your system tray. You'll be greeted with Avast's configuration dialog box. As you can see, Avast takes charge of protecting you from viruses that can enter your PC via instant messaging, email, p2p programs and others.

The Avast anti-virus system is a conglomeration of resident services that help keep your computer in top-notch condition. For example, there's a resident email service that resides in memory and scans each email that comes in through Outlook or Thunderbird, assuring protection against hazardous email attachments.

If you keep the memory resident service running, you can just sit back and relax; Avast will do everything automatically. However, you may wish to turn off some or all of these memory resident services. To disable a service, select its associated icon on the list box on the left side of Avast's configuration dialog.

Suppose you want to disable the automatic scanning of your instant messaging sent via AIM; select on the first icon labeled Instant Messaging in the configuration dialog list box; from here flick on Pause or Terminate. You can enable the instant messaging protection service by pressing the Start button.

The Home Edition of Avast is an excellent virus solution. Coupled with a powerful, intuitive anti-virus system that I recommend.

Download your copy here!

AVAST Anti-Virus

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