Ever since its inception years, avast! Antivirus has continually grown to its present reputation of reliable antivirus and, more importantly, one of the most complete free security pieces on the market. The differences between the freebie and the paid version of the product are few and, for some users, insignificant.

Working on the improvement of all the products by adding new components and perfecting technology, avast! has made its way among the top dogs of the industry. Moreover, its user base is on an ascending path, despite the fact that the latest version of the free product has not been adopted by all avast! users just yet.

ALWIL Chief Technology Officer Ondrej Vlcek was kind enough to answer some questions about the company and its most demanded product, the free antivirus. The questions cover product and technology-related issues and are revealing of ALWIL’s constant uptrend and future plans.

Softpedia: avast! offers by far the most complete, feature-wise, free antivirus solution on the market today. Some people question the profitability of this business model, and claim that users of free versions are rarely interested in upgrading. Can you estimate a conversion to paying customers rate for your free product?

Ondrej Vlcek: While we don’t disclose the exact numbers, I can say that the actual percentage of people who upgrade to the paid product is in low single digits. These numbers significantly differ country by country; the conversion rates in the English speaking countries are typically the highest.

Softpedia: To our knowledge, avast! is the only free antivirus product to feature behavior-based detection. From our experience, such a component can be instrumental in catching complex trojans like ZeuS or Clampi, which are constantly modified to evade traditional signature-based or even heuristic detection. Do you think avast!’s Behavior Shield gives it an edge over the competition in this respect?

Ondrej Vlcek: The Behavior Shield that we shipped in version 5.0 is a new component that is going to be further developed moving forward. For example, in version 5.1, we will be adding more sensors that will allow for even finer-grain filtering.

For now, the Behavior Shield is focused on exploits coming via typical mechanisms (browser, PDF reader, and flash vulnerabilities, for example). It also closely monitors all kernel-mode code (drivers) loaded into the operating system, and is able to detect zero-day rootkits.

Softpedia: Avira recently claimed an over 145 million user base. We know that avast! celebrated reaching 100 million registered users back in December. Can you reveal what the figure is right now and can you estimate how much, percentage-wise, has version 5 of avast! Free Antivirus contributed to your user base growth?

Ondrej Vlcek: First, when talking about the size of the user base, one should make it clear what the numbers actually mean. In avast!, we use two metrics. One is the number of registered users (the free version of avast needs to be registered in order to work) and this number is currently about 110 million. Second is the number of active users. This means the number of machines that actually go out and download a definition update at least once during a given period of time (e.g. one month). In case of avast, this second number is currently something below 100 million. This may not sound so big but if you think about it, this equals to some 15-20% of all consumer PCs in the world (depending on which numbers you believe).

AVG’s numbers are similar. I don’t quite trust the Avira’s numbers as they seem to be inconsistent. In any case, we can assume that the free products are used by some 300-350 million users worldwide, and that’s a huge number. I think the traditional vendors haven’t quite realized yet that the market has really started to lean towards the free products.

But to answer the original question, as of April 2010, about 2/3 of our user base is still running the 4.8 version. Unlike the other vendors, we don’t rush upgrading our users. We expect the upgrade campaign to last at least till autumn.

Softpedia: The difference between the Free and Pro versions of avast! Antivirus, as far as included technologies go, is the Sandbox and the Script Shield components. Can you explain in more detail how these features work and why a user would pay almost 35 Euros ($48) to have them?

Ondrej Vlcek: We recently did a survey among our users who decided to upgrade to the paid product, and the results were quite interesting. About one third of the users upgraded because they just felt like paying us some money (after a year or two of using the free product). And another third upgraded because they were convinced the paid product would provide better protection (without actually studying what were the technical differences).

In any case, we now position the Pro Antivirus as a product for advanced users. The mainstream paid product is now the Internet Security Suite (which also includes a silent firewall and an antispam), and indeed, roughly 75% of our users are now upgrading to the Suite (and only 25% to the Pro AV).

Softpedia: Cloud-computing-assisted malware scanning is a technology some vendors are adopting in order to develop AV applications with improved performance. Is ALWIL considering a similar direction for its future products?

Ondrej Vlcek: Yes, I can confirm that we are working on certain protection features that will actively work with our backend servers (as opposed to passive updates). I’m not a big fan of the term cloud though – I think many people use it in many different contexts, but most users don’t really understand the meaning or the benefits.

Certain problems can be solved more efficiently by means of real-time communication with the backend servers, although by far not all – so we certainly don’t want to use it for things that are better accomplished locally. We will be publishing more details on this in the upcoming months.

Softpedia: We know that users of avast! Antivirus contribute to a community-based malware intelligence gathering effort, called Community IQ. Can you explain what kind of suspicious samples are collected through this component? Is this limited to suspicious PE files or are other potentially malicious files, such as PDFs, also included?

Ondrej Vlcek: In the current implementation, the only files that are gathered are indeed binary/executable (PE) files. These are accompanied by additional context information though, such as the originating URL, parent/child processes etc.

Softpedia: To what extent has the distribution of Google Chrome participated in the development of the free product? Is it a source of steady income that also partially funds the development of your paid products?

Ondrej Vlcek: The main purpose of the Google Chrome distribution deal was not to bring us revenue. As you may remember, avast! is now being distributed as part of the Google Pack (European version only, at least for now) and these two deals were signed at the same time. We’re quite proud of partnering with Google – very few companies managed to establish a similar relationship with them, and there is definitely some potential here.

Softpedia: In our latest testing, we witnessed avast! 5’s amazing scan speed. Could you elaborate on the underpinning leading to such performance?

Ondrej Vlcek: There are many significant changes in the v5 engine, and many of them are performance related. Without going into too much detail, there are two main reasons for the increased performance: we scan fewer files, and those that we scan are processed faster.

Scanning fewer files is accomplished by means of the persistent cache, a feature that allows us to never scan files that are trusted (unless they change, of course). Faster scanning is achieved by a number of optimizations – taking advantage of all CPU cores, for example. As a matter of fact, we partnered with Intel and spent quite some time with their performance engineers, coming up with some neat tricks.

On the other hand, if you’re referring to the recent detection test, I’d say it’s a bit unfair to judge the performance of a product by its scan time on a set of malware. Normally, you only measure scan speeds on the clean sets as that’s what most users actually have (hopefully!). The reason for this is that in case of many AV products, whenever a virus is detected, additional tasks are taking place.

Softpedia: The online scanner has been around for some time now. Would you comment on its popularity among users?

Ondrej Vlcek: The online scanner is outdated now – it was never a full blown scanner, just a handy tool to scan a single file. And with online services like VirusTotal or Jotti available for some time now, we feel that the usefulness of this tool is very limited.

Softpedia: Is ALWIL ready to follow the model of so many antivirus developers and acquire technologies from other security companies?

Ondrej Vlcek: We’ve always considered ourselves as a technology company. We’re proud that over half of our organization is still made up of highly technical people – programmers, virus analysts etc.

To that end, we always felt that developing things in-house will give us ultimate control over the quality of our product. This is not to say that there won’t be any acquisitions, it’s just that so far, in-house development has worked better for us.

Softpedia: Has your company turned down any offers to license avast! Antivirus engine to third parties?

Ondrej Vlcek: Absolutely. We are getting such offers pretty much all the time. We generally turn them down as we don’t feel having even more players on the already crowded battlefield would be a meaningful thing to do. If you look at the latest Virus Bulletin comparative test, you will notice that there were roughly 60 (!) products there… this is ridiculous, given the number of the actual engines.

Softpedia: Every company looks to expand its activity. Is the development of other standalone utilities such as a standalone firewall or system cleaning utilities pinned in ALWIL’s future plans?

Ondrej Vlcek: The primary focus is the anti-virus, and that’s how it’s going to be in the foreseeable future. We’re obviously developing other smaller components but I don’t see them being sold as standalone products.

Antivirus is what we have been doing for the last 20 years, and that’s what we’re focusing on.

Reducerea este disponibila pentru urmatoarele produse:

avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0

avast! Internet Security

Pentru mai multe detalii va rugam sa ne contactati la info@easymedia.ro sau 031-8006677.

Asa cum am zis intr-un articol, Avast! “Home Edition” este cel mai bun antivirus gratuit, acum odata Avast 5, Avast a redenumite versiunea “Home Edition”, un titlu care nu striga lumii ca este gratuit (unii potentiali clienti erau indepartati din necunostinta), cu titlul de Avast Free Antivirus, cuvantul “FREE” este cunoscut de majoritatea consumatorilor care au avut experienta sa navigheze pe internet si sa caute programe, indeferent de limba pe care o cunosc.

Pe langa protectia pe care ultima versiune (Avast Home Edition 4.8) o avea, in Avast Free Antivirus 5 veti gasi un imbunatatit motor (engine) de antivirus si spyware pentru protectie in timp real, un emulator de cod care este folosit de izoleze programele cu virusi intr-un mediu isolat, un motor Heuritic, care detecteaza proactiv programele malitioase care deobicei nu sunt detectate de definitiile normale, motorul Heuristic acopera atat fisierele binare (executabile) cat si scipturile malitioase. In plus acum avast include si Inteligent Scanner, care reduce numarul de fisiere scanate (fisierele identificate ca sunt “sanatoase” nu vor mai fi scanate doar daca re schimba) si implicit timpul de scanare cu 80%, si un scut de comportament care foloseste un numar de senzori si reporteaza sau blockeaza comportamentul suspicios.

Mai mult pe blogul lui Allex Radu.

Supported operating systems for avast! Free Antivirus 5.0, avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 and avast! Internet Security 5.0 are Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows XP (any Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit), Microsoft Windows Vista (any Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit) or Microsoft Windows 7 (any Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit).

Note:
It means, that avast! 5.0 isn’t supported (isn’t compatible, couldn’t be installed and won’t run) on DOS, Microsoft Windows 3.x, Microsoft Windows NT 3.x, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows Server operating systems or others which aren’t specified as supported.

Yes, but there isn’t necessary any user interaction to uninstall avast! 4.x, because installer of avast! 5.0 is able to detect previous instance of avast! 4.x and uninstall it automatically.

Open the avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 interface and click on the ‘Maintenance‘ tab. Next click on ‘Registration‘ and then on ‘Register now‘. A new window with registration form will open. Into the form fields fill the required data and then click on ‘Register for free license‘.

avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 can now continue to be used for 12 months and you will continue to receive automatic updates to both the program and your virus definitions. At the end of that time, it will be necessary simply to register for a new free license.

Licenses for avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 and avast! Internet Security 5.0 can be purchased via our website, www.avast.com.

After receiving your license file, you just need to double-click to open it and your license will be inserted into your program automatically.

Alternatively, save the license file on your computer, open the avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 or avast! Internet Security 5.0 interface and click on the ‘Maintenance‘ tab. Next click on ‘Subscription‘ and then on ‘Insert license file‘. A dialog window will open where you can browse your computer to locate your license file. Once you have located it, double click on it and it will be automatically inserted into the program.

avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 or avast! Internet Security 5.0 can now continue to be used for 12, 24, or 36 months, depending on the purchased license, and you will continue to receive automatic updates to both the program and your virus definitions. At the end of that time, it will be necessary simply to purchase and insert a new license key.

avast! 5.0 comes with a number of pre-defined scans installed by default (‘Quick scan‘, ‘Full System Scan‘, ‘Removable Media Scan‘, ‘Select folder to scan‘) and also you can create your own custom defined scans. All these scans can be performed simultaneously. But, if you execute too many pre-defined and/or custom defined scans at the same time, depending on your computer configuration you can observe some system performance degradation.

At various times while your computer is running, messages may be displayed on your screen e.g. when the virus definitions have been updated, when an incoming email is being scanned etc. This can result in full-screen applications (e.g. games) being interrupted as Windows switches from full-screen mode to normal mode when the message appears. You can specify that messages will never be displayed, or will not be displayed if a full-screen application is running.

This is a completely new feature in avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 and avast! Internet Security 5.0 which allows you to browse the web or run another application in a completely safe environment. This is especially useful when visiting high-risk web sites, whether accidentally or deliberately, as the browser will be completely contained within the avast! Sandbox, preventing any damage to your computer.

The avast! Sandbox can also be used to run any other applications which you think may be suspect – you can run the program inside the avast! Sandbox to determine whether or not it is safe while remaining completely protected against any malicious actions that it may try to carry out.

To run an application or to browse the web using the avast! Sandbox, just browse the files on your computer to find the required application e.g. Internet Explorer. The browser or other application will then open in a special window with a red border, indicating that it is being run inside the avast! Sandbox.

Also you can further define applications that should always be run in virtualized mode, and trusted applications that should never be virtualized.

avast! Internet Security 5.0 includes a fully integrated avast! Antispam module to detect unwanted email.

Spam delivered to your mailbox can result in your mailbox quickly becoming full, as a result which, legitimate emails may not be received. It can also unnecessarily increase the load on the email server, internet connection, local networks etc.

The avast! Antispam module analyses all incoming email based on various criteria to determine whether it is legitimate. This analysis is based partly on a ‘Blacklist‘ containing the addresses of senders from whom emails should always be marked as spam, and a ‘Whitelist‘ which contains the addresses of known and trusted senders. These lists can be found in the antispam settings. For emails from senders that are not on either list, a content analysis is also carried out based on the specified scan sensitivity to identify email that should be treated as spam.

In the avast! Antispam settings you can also specify how spam emails should be marked. This can then be used to create a new rule in your email client, for example to automatically move the marked emails to another folder. The avast! Antispam module is effective for messages delivered to email accounts installed on your computer such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express etc. but not for web based email accounts such as Yahoo, Gmail etc. which usually have their own antispam options.

Web based email services such as Yahoo, Gmail etc. usually have their own security options, because e-mails are received and stored on the remote mail server and users access their email accounts remotely via web browser. In other words, the web based email services acts like any other website, and if you try to save, download or run some suspicious data from the web based email account, avast! 5.0 is able to protect your computer.

If you haven’t any information about security solution used by appropriate web based e-mail service provider, you can alternatively control your web based email account via browser launched within the avast! Sandbox to be completely secured.

This situation may be resolved by reducing the heuristic sensitivity. In the avast! Antispam settings is possible to set the scan sensitivity as ‘Low‘, ‘Medium‘ or ‘High‘. avast! will perform a heuristic analysis of all incoming mail to identify potential spam – the heuristic analysis comprises a large number of tests based on typical spam content or behavior and the sensitivity level will determine how many tests would have to be failed for a message to be considered spam. The higher the sensitivity, the higher the “pass mark”, therefore the higher the number of emails that will fail the heuristic test and will be treated as spam.

Yes, combination of avast! Antispam and integrated URL blocking feature in avast! Internet Security 5.0 provides sufficient anti-phishing protection.

avast! Internet Security 5.0 includes a fully integrated avast! Firewall which can be controlled directly from the avast! Internet Security 5.0 user interface.

The avast! Firewall monitors all communication between your computer and the outside world and blocks unauthorized communication based on a number of ‘Allow‘ and ‘Deny‘ rules. In this way, the avast! Firewall can prevent sensitive data from leaving your computer and can also block attempted intrusions by external hackers.

You should select an option ‘Airport/High Risk Zone‘ which is suitable when using your computer to connect to a public network and where you want to ensure the maximum level of security. This is the most secure setting and if selected, no incoming communication will be allowed, effectively making your computer completely invisible to others.

Three products (Free Antivirus, Pro Antivirus, and Internet Security) and a new website are being released today. Even though we have expanded our product portfolio, our philosophy of having and promoting a top-notch free antivirus is paramount. This philosophy has enabled us to achieve 100 million users and we are continuing it. As you read through our new website and launch information, you will see that not only is the new free product easier to use and more visually appealing than the old product, it provides even more security protection. And it is still free and free from annoying pop-ups and requests for money.

These products are not minor updates from the existing products. They are all new. Some of the changes—such as the new user interface—are obvious. Some are not obvious at all (such as the new scanning engine). All-in-all we think they are a vast improvement from the current products—modern, light, fast, and very effective. For details, see the product detail pages on the new website.

1. Avast! Free Antivirus. This is our new flagship product and replaces Avast Home Edition (we changed the name to emphasize the product is free). We focus this product on users that use the internet for web browsing and email. If that is what you do on the internet, this is the product you need. We are very proud of this product and we stack it up against anyone else’s paid antivirus—in fact, we have recently started submitting this product in lieu of our paid products to all of the industry standard tests. Virus Bulletin, one of the most respected journals, recently called this product “….nothing short of a miracle” (see separate blog post). Google selected this product for incorporation in many of their Google Packs.
2. Avast! Internet Security. This is our brand-new product and is focused on users that do on-line banking or shopping or that have sensitive data on their computer. We believe that these users need some extra layers of protection and developed this product to provide three more layers. This product takes the free antivirus and adds a 2-way silent firewall, a sandbox, and anti-spam. The firewall ensures that only trusted applications are able to receive or send data across the internet. The sandbox provides a means of executing your browser (or any other application) in a protected environment—thus even if you get infected, the infection does not leave the sandbox and does not harm your computer. And the anti-spam helps you get rid of all that irritating email you receive every day. And, we have made this product attractive to consumer users—a single license can be used on 3 computers in your household.
3. Avast! Pro Antivirus. This is the update to the old Professional Edition. We focus this product on individuals that want to customize their security and on businesses. It is the same as Internet Security but without the firewall or anti-spam. This allows world-class security using your own personal choice of firewall and anti-spam.

To support these products, there is also a brand new website. Today the website will only be available in English and French. But, as the other languages roll out, the language-specific websites will also.

If you are using a 4.8 product (home or professional editions), the update is pretty painless.  Sometime in the near future, the 4.8 product will tell you version 5.0 is available.  You will have the choice of a free upgrade or a special existing-user offer for the new Internet Security. All you have to do is click which option you want, and you will be upgraded. As we have about 100 million users, these messages will take a month or two to get to all users. If you don’t want to wait for this automated message, you can manually upgrade and get the same special offers by clicking on the homepage banner that asks if you are already a 4.8 user.

As you can imagine, it was a massive effort to release three new products and a new website at the same time. All of our teams have done a great job in making this happen. Development of course developed the new products. But many other teams were also involved—virus lab and research, localization and translation, website development, on-line store, and marketing.

If you are reading this at launch time, we will think of you as we celebrate with the Czech national drink……

From: http://blog.avast.com/2010/01/19/avast-version-5-0-is-here/

New range of free and premium antivirus products launched in version 5.0

PRAGUE, Czech Republic, January 19, 2010 – ALWIL Software, makers of the world’s most popular free antivirus program with over 100 million users, has launched new versions of its popular free and premium software.

The new 5.0 furthers the company’s objective of offering full-fledged antivirus and anti-malware protection that is modern, sophisticated – and free. Together with the free version, avast! is also introducing the new premium Internet Security suite and an update of its paid Antivirus Pro product.

“With avast! 5.0, we are defining a new direction in antivirus,” explains Vince Steckler, CEO of ALWIL Software. “Our free and paid versions are identical in terms of the level of malware protection. The Free version is designed for ordinary internet use while avast! Internet Security 5.0, our new top product, is best for internet users doing security sensitive activities such as on-line shopping and banking.” The new Internet Security includes an automatic Silent Firewall and anti-spam service with ongoing updates to help users deal with unwanted email.

The new avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0 uses the same core detection engine with more customization options. “It offers a few extra functions aimed at more advanced users, small businesses or technical experts who want to integrate avast! into an existing, best of breed, security solution,” says Mr. Steckler. “These advanced features include real-time script inspection, a command line scanner and the new sandboxing technology for safely examining suspicious file activity.

The new avast! 5.0 products are already getting kudos and “seals of approval”:

1. AV Comparatives gave the beta avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 its “advanced” rating in its Whole Product Dynamic Test (December 2009). [http://www.av-comparatives.org]
2. VB Magazine, one of the industry’s leading security magazines, calls the new avast! Free “nothing short of a miracle”. [http://www.virusbtn.com/files/Avast-Jan2010.pdf]
3. Google is bundling the new 5.0 in select European versions of its Google Pack. [http://blog.avast.com/2010/01/14/free-avast-5-chosen-for-google-pack/]

“If you look at the results for the last version of avast! Free Antivirus at leading independent testing labs, we outperformed paid solutions in detection rates and performance,” comments Ondrej Vlcek, Chief Technology Officer at ALWIL Software. AV-Comparatives in November awarded avast! the highest “advanced+” rating for its ability to proactively detect viruses and malware without a fresh virus update.

avast! 5.0 sets a performance benchmark that paid antivirus will have a hard job to match. “The product outperforms a number of competitor products we’ve struggled with in our tests in recent years,” writes John Hawes, Technical Consultant & Test Team Director of VirusBulletin, the UK-based independent computer security testing agency, in its January 2010 issue. “That it manages to look pretty fabulous too is pure gravy. The new suite version has some fun and useful extras, and the free version being available to all without charge is nothing short of a miracle.”

Architectural improvements in the new products make the lives of users easier by optimizing performance to take advantage of multiple PC processor cores. Tests conducted on the Intel’s latest notebook platform based on Intel® Core™ i5 mobile processor demonstrate that the new avast! 5.0 is 40% faster than the previous versions[1].

“Intel delivers new processors with great performance headroom for today’s demanding customers. We are glad to have been able to aid avast! in optimizing its security solution to take full advantage of our latest technologies with the clear benefit for end users,” said Wolfgang Petersen, EMEA Director of Intel Software & Services Group.

The faster scanning speed does not require greater computer resources. To the contrary, the new 5.0 is lighter on system resources as shown by the reduced energy consumption. Each full scan requires 10.6 Wh less electric energy. With 100 million avast! users, this translates to a potential 50 GWh energy saving per year. So, there is something for the environment as well.

Free is where the action is, and it is profitable space for avast! as Steckler explains, “Our free version is for home non-commercial use. We believe that by showing these users the full potential of our software, they will continue to advocate our brand into the wider market.” Considering that two out of every three avast! users discovered the software through a friend’s recommendation, the focus on the free version is a proven market building strategy.  “If you look at the antivirus market, many vendors use trialware or stripped down versions of their software to lure new customers,” comments Steckler. “This model is flawed because users need complete security and not tease-ware or advertising-ware. Computer users demand full functionality for free and avast! Antivirus 5.0 gives them just that.”

Technical overview

avast! Free Antivirus 5.0

avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 replaces the old avast! Home Edition. It uses the same malware detection capability as both premium versions and is not a stripped down or impaired version. It is the best solution for all users who use the Internet for e-mailing, chatting or web browsing. Since its introduction in 2004, avast! Free Antivirus has become one of the world’s most popular applications. Its growing pool of over 100 million users consistently give the software high approval ratings.

avast! Internet Security 5.0

The new avast! Internet Security provides comprehensive security for on-line shopping and banking. It provides protection against threats from infected web sites and the growing risk of identity theft. As the premium avast! product, it contains an intelligent firewall and a comprehensive anti-spam/phishing module in addition to the antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, scriptblocker and other real-time shields. avast! Internet Security can be licensed for 3, 5 or 10 computers starting at $59.95 for 1 year protection.

avast! Pro Antivirus 5.0

avast! Pro Antivirus replaces avast! Professional Edition and is primarily designed for small businesses and computer specialists who want the ability to customize their security protection alongside their own firewall and anti-spam filter. avast! Pro Antivirus includes sandbox virtualization and protection against both remotely and locally executed scripts. Licenses for avast! Pro Antivirus can be purchased for 1, 3, 5 and 10 PCs. A single year license for 1 PC is $39.95.

About ALWIL Software

ALWIL Software is the maker of avast! — the world’s most popular computer security program with over 100 million registered users. From its headquarters in the Czech Republic, ALWIL Software has developed the award-winning suite of avast! products and localized them into 33 languages. Further details about the company and its products can be found at http://www.avast.com.

avast! is a registered trademark in the United States of America and other

countries and is used under exclusive license to ALWIL Software

From: Avast Forum

“It’s important that our users know avast! is fully compatible with Windows 7 from the very beginning,” said Ondrej Vlcek, Chief Technology Officer at ALWIL Software, makers of avast!.

Microsoft’s “Compatible with Windows 7” logo can now be used with Avast! version 4.8 software. The logo will help Windows 7 users easily identify software and other products that have passed Microsoft tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7.

“We’re excited about Windows 7 and hope it will be adopted soon,” said Vlcek. “It’s not only nice for the users but it also brings a number of improvements and fixes for software developers.”

To complete compatibility testing and ensure that avast! worked with Windows 7, ALWIL Software sent specialists to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. “We had two teams working in parallel on this,” said Vlcek. The teams tested avast! with a basket of lower-level applications during their Redmond visit.

AWIL Software is preparing avast! version 5, the newest version of its antivirus program, for full compatibility with Windows 7 ahead of its launch this autumn. “”We’ve done the initial tests and are making sure that the new features such as persistent caching, process virtualization and the firewall all work great under Windows 7,” said Vlcek.

More information about avast! antivirus software can be found at http://www.avast.com .

The Microsoft listing of security programs that are compatible with Windows 7 is at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx .