"Avast, there!"

No, me hearties, it is not Talk Like A Pirate Day, that was on the 19th and I missed it. Now I am talking about Avast! the anti virus program. I have used the free version of AVG for so long I can hardly remember anything else. I went to it when my Norton Anti-Virus subscription ran out and I was looking for a free replacement and settled on AVG. I had AVG on all three of our computers and installed it on all the other computers I set up for family and friends. It has served me well and I can only recall one virus that got through and that was my own fault.

However, some computer expert friends of mine have directed me to some recent reports comparing anti-virus programs and I noticed that AVG was slipping down the list slightly. The program recommended by these folks was Avast! Since I had just purchased a new netbook, I decided to try Avast! out on it.

My main concern was the lack of the ability to schedule scans like I could do with AVG. This bothered me at first until I discovered that I could load Avast! as a screen saver and it would scan every time the screen saver was running. This was even better than AVG's scheduled scan which required leaving the laptop on all night once in a while. Avast! also downloads new virus definitions several times a day so it should be more up to date than AVG was.

I now have it loaded on all four of our computers and it seems to be running well. If you download it, just make sure you have the free version as both the paid and free versions are available from the same website.