Most new computers come with an antivirus program good for 90 days or some other expiration period. Then you have to renew your subscription to continue getting updates to the antivirus database. My computer was no exception and came with Norton AntiVirus 2002. Each year around renewal time I look around to see if there might be any alternatives that I should consider. In the past I tried or at least downloaded some others such as McAfee, Panda, F-Secure, AVG, Kaspersky, and Norman. I have a multi-boot machine with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP, so I would usually use my Windows 2000 partition as a guinea pig to try something new. I never found myself happy with the alternatives. Sometimes they were too aggressive or pestering in their desire for me to register or purchase them or related products. Sometimes I couldnt figure out how to set up e-mail scanning based on vague instructions to change my POP e-mail server host to 127.0.0.1 in my mail program, with no further explanation. Or sometimes they seemed to discourage purchase by individuals. I always gave up and wound up renewing my Norton subscription. This year I tried something new and actually liked it. At one of those sites where users comment on software reviews, someone praised avast! Antivirus over Norton. I had never heard of it, but decided to take a peek at their Web site (http://www.avast.com). I saw a logo for a 100% Virus Bulletin award for some recent month. I had heard that Norton usually does well on these monthly tests of virus detection. Then I noticed that the company was based in the Czech Republic, which is home to a Java software development program I use at work (IntelliJ IDEA by JetBrains, if anyone is curious). I really like the IDEA program, so I thought maybe there are some more good Czech programmers out there. If you decide to try a new antivirus program, make sure you uninstall your current one first. They are certain to interfere with each other. At a minimum you may experience performance problems and at worst running both may lock up your computer. If I remember correctly a Mail Protection
Wizard was run when I installed avast!, to set up e-mail
virus scanning. Not longer after installing avast! a mans voice announced, along with an instant messenger-style pop-up window, that my virus definitions had been updated. I thought that was kind of cool, but you can configure the settings to suppress any sounds if you like. You can also tell the program whether you have a permanent connection to the Internet, to facilitate virus definition and program updates. The on-access protection consists of several providers: the basic one for when files are accessed, separate ones for Outlook mail versus other Internet mail programs, instant messenger activity, and perhaps a less common featurepeer to peer file sharing programs such as Kazaa or WinMX. There are two versions of the program: Home and Professional. The Professional version adds script blocking in supported browsers, i.e. Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Mozilla. You can do manual scans any time and with the Professional version you can schedule the scans to be run automatically. The first time I ran a scan with avast! it found a Trojan in my Internet Explorer cache, which apparently had been there for some time and had never been discovered by Norton in all the years I had been running it. Of course this is just anecdotal evidence and is not a sufficient reason by itself to choose one antivirus program over another. Its possible that I could run avast! for some time and then try Norton later and have it catch something missed by avast!. A second warning I got from avast! that Norton didnt give me was during e-mail scanning. A regular news summary e-mail I get from Business Week was flagged as having an I-frame which is an HTML construct that can potentially, but not necessarily, be dangerous. The URL referenced is displayed, and if you deem it benign, you can click to add it to a list of permitted URLs so you wont be warned next time. Some days later I got a spam e-mail with the same warning, so of course I didnt add the referenced URL in that case and just deleted that e-mail. The Home version has just a simple interface from which you can view status, initiate scans, set basic settings, and update the virus database. The Home version is free and just requires registration to use it beyond the 60-day trial period. The Professional version adds an enhanced interface option, which allows more detailed access to settings, and from which you can set up scheduled scans, which arent available with the Home version. The Professional version costs $39.95 with one-year of updates, with discounts for 2- and 3-year terms. One setting I like is the ability to have it display the items it scans in real-time in the lower right portion of your screen. This can be separately configured for the different on-access protection providers. After turning this on for all the providers, I soon turned it off for the file access protection and script blocking, but left it on for e-mail scanning. Whenever something is being scanned the little system tray icon, which is a ball with the letter a, rotates to let you know its working. I appreciate this kind of subtle feedback. After trying avast! for a week or so I was impressed enough to purchase the Professional version as a replacement for Norton. That turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than I expected. From their Web sites purchase page you can click on a buy now button which takes you to the share-it! service. Things seemed pretty routine until I got to the part where I had to enter my e-mail address in order to receive a license key. I was informed that I couldnt use a freemail account (such as hotmail or yahoo). In fact that is the only type of e-mail account I use for e-commerce purposes. So I was initially deterred from purchasing this software program. I eventually regrouped and clicked on a different link for distributors and resellers and found some in the USA. They all seemed kind of like small-time operators that didnt particularly instill confidence in me to make the purchase with them. One I tried was about to send me to a site in China and warned me to click on the English link on that page. I decided not to go there. I finally wound up choosing the first reseller on the USA list, Rick The Computer Guy. This site also seemed a little iffy with its under construction signs, but it would allow me to use any e-mail account I liked, so I threw a little caution to the wind and purchased it there. I got a nice confirmation e-mail telling me my credit card would be charged for the agreed amount, but I didnt have a license key yet to show for it. Fortunately a follow-up e-mail came the next day with the license key, and it actually did work. Whew! So would I recommend this antivirus program? I like it for myself and feel it would be suitable for someone who is computer-savvy enough, for example, to know how to look at their e-mail programs settings. For the computer novice I think something like Norton AntiVirus is probably more suitable. The purchasing experience was a bit more painful than it should have been for the Professional version, but that ultimately turned out well for me. You can always go for the Home version which, for non-commercial purposes, is completely free with registration. Also note that there are Linux and PDA versions of the program. |
Richard Corzo is a computer programmer who loves to tinker with operating systems. He has recently developed a fascination for the Mac OS, and has become leader of a revived DACS Mac SIG.. He can be reached at macsig@dacs.org. |