After several years of using an older version of McAfee Virus Scan (4.5) I’ve switched my virus scanner program over to avast!.

I was always fond of McAfee, and I still think that that older version is a good product. But, recently, I’ve experienced nothing but trouble from various clients who’ve installed more recent offerings from both McAfee and Norton. In my opinion, all of the bells and whistles of the new versions have managed to impede the software’s functionality. Too often, the systems end up crashing or the install routine fails to install properly. In most cases, installing the older version of Virus Scan worked just fine, and things would run properly after that.

However, McAfee has now dropped updated engine support from the old 4.5 version of Virus Scan. While the latest definitions will still work under the last available engine version, I’d rather use something that’s the most up to date in both areas.

Where McAfee and/or Norton may have caused problems on various computers I’ve worked on, avast! has never failed to install or function properly. I find its interface to be clean and simple – plus the “spinning ball” thing is sort of fun. Also, you can’t beat the fact that, for home use, it’s a free product requiring only an email to register for a product key.

It doesn’t offer a scheduler in the free Home version (only in the Professional version) but it does check for updates on its own automatically. (Although I have yet to determine on what kind of schedule this takes place – every time it finds itself online and/or if a certain time has elapsed?) After installing it on my own computer, I was delighted to be told that I’d had an update received and installed. (Like “You’ve got mail!” only for the virus definitions.)

It took me a bit of fiddling to get it to work with my installation of Pegasus and STunnel – mainly because I’d previously set things up in a somewhat non-standard way – and I think I bugged my friend Glen more than I should feel proud to admit to – but now all is well. (Plus I understand some things more than if I’d had no problem at all.)