avast! 2016 BETA released!

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by RejZoR, Oct 1, 2015.

  1. Rolo42

    Rolo42 Registered Member

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    That's like saying, "I have too much money; take some away." hehe
    I like options/granularity; I think that's one of avast's strong points.
    Better tooltips would be beneficial (i.e. the "i" for Hardened mode doesn't actually say anything and there are no tooltips for Moderate/Aggressive options. Googling these things runs the risk of getting user opinions rather than author's facts. Oh lookie, I just noticed the "?" in the title bar <Mod: there's no emoticon for embarrassed> that does state what these modes do. Maybe have the "i" link to the help file documentation or grab the relevant excerpt from it rather than maintaining two separate help feature strings.

    What is "NG"? Is that the network scanner dealie?

    I hate ads but I don't mind this at all as it isn't popping up at me on its own (it is triggered by my manual action). I'd rather have Google pay for my stuff than I. ;)

    arrrrrrrg matey...you're avast! "That ship has sailed." is the correct metaphor!
     
  2. Tyrizian

    Tyrizian Registered Member

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    Thank you, Rompin Raider, I really do appreciate that
     
  3. Tyrizian

    Tyrizian Registered Member

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    Thank you Vlk for taking the time to listen to the community, as I feel that is the best thing you/a company can do.

    You being here and taking our feedback is slowly bringing me back to avast! again.
     
  4. Essexboy

    Essexboy Registered Member

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  5. Tyrizian

    Tyrizian Registered Member

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    I completely agree, but a lot of the features (in my opinion) are adding heft to the installer size, which I definitely do not like. While the majority out there do have fast internet speeds to download these installers, there is a lot of people out there who are on limited connections.

    Either avast! needs to evaluate what are the money makers and which ones aren't or figure out a way to optimize the installer size without stripping custom features.


    This has been snipped...
    Some information about new avast! NG component: our classic sandbox technology (used for DeepScreen, Sandbox and SafeZone components) restricts a sandboxed application to modify your system. As Windows OS is quite rich for various APIs and frameworks, we need to monitor more and more OS functions invoked from the unknown applications. This works perfect for Sandbox/SafeZone, but it's not enough for DeepScreen analysis. When a malware is analyzed in DeepScreen, we'd like to allow it to behave freely without any restrictions and monitor only its activities. Unfortunately, we might end up very soon if it tries e.g. to load a kernel-mode driver (you can't monitor kernel-mode, and if it gets there, it can control your entire OS, hide itself, connect to internet, ...), or use some undocumented system calls on 64-bit OSes (we use own hypervisor driver to fully protect 64-bit OSes, but this doesn't work on older PCs or with disabled VT-X/AMD-V feature in BIOS).

    Avast! NG helps us to analyze malware real-time totally without any restrictions - it can load a kernel driver, it can delete any Windows files, format your volume, everything it wishes. The malware is executed on your OS using VirtualBox engine and the entire OS with malware is monitored. NG was heavily tested for a few months by our user base and we have fixed various HW/SW conflicts and tuned performance. After avast installation, it takes a couple of minutes to prepare NG (this is executed in the background with normal priority in this Beta, it'll be on idle priority in final release).

    ^^^^^^^ Somewhat old information, but you get the idea.



    See, this is where it gets hard, because there is a percentage of people who don't mind it, and those that do mind it.

    I guess this is something for avast! to figure out themselves...How to offer a balance for both sides.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2015
  6. clocks

    clocks Registered Member

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    Thank you. This makes sense. Again, the core Avast AV is very nice! And in recent tests it is scoring well. But there's so many add-ons, maybe another way to package the software may be better. I'd vote for a Avast "Slim" version.
     
  7. Rolo42

    Rolo42 Registered Member

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    I get your (and yesnoo) point but you only need to download the installer once and we are only talking about megabytes here. "It's a great program...but I dunno 'bout that installer size...could be a deal-breaker!" seems...not really relevant. If RelevantOpenCandyKnowledge and Chrome_offline_installer were included in the package, I could see the point.

    Ah, thanks. That answered two questions: Since VirtualBox doesn't work on 10 yet, I wondered if avast!'s virtualisation would have issues. I assume we're all waiting on Oracle..?
     
  8. Handen

    Handen Registered Member

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    Avast should hire this man.

    This reminds me of how smart phone makers add all of their own 'stuff' that absolutely is a waste of time.. Everyone uses Spotify, Pandora etc.. What's the chances we will switch to LG-Music, Samsung Milk or AppleMusic? Probably zero. Everyone uses iTunes or Googeplay, and on the off chance Amazon-Appstore to get/buy apps. What's the chances we give a darn about a Samsung or LG app store? These AV firms should focus on Cloud, Behaviour/DNA/Fingerprinting/Karma based stuff and heuristics. Stop messing with a bunch of junk nobody will use that don't enhance the core product for the majority of your customers.
     
  9. vlk

    vlk AV Expert

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    Sorry but I couldn't disagree more. What you're basically saying is that it doesn't make any sense to try to change the status-quo. E.g. that because there is Spotify and Pandora it doesn't make any sense to bother with developing of any other music streaming service. That because there is Google Play there is no point even trying to enter the app store business. Etc...

    If that was the case, there would be no innovation, don't you think?

    I think the contrary is actually true: all of these markets are very dynamic, and are totally ripe for disruption every single day. Tomorrow, there may be different leaders in all of those categories. And new categories can emerge.

    If you want an example, look at what Google is doing. What started as a research project to optimize fulltext search algorithms is now a company that not only dominates the global web search, but also spans across vast amount of other categories, from social networking to virtual reality to self-driving cars. Very few companies actually want to stay a company of one product. That's a very fragile configuration -- and hence, very risky from the business perspective. And that holds even more if the underlying device (e.g. the PC space in case of antivirus software) is facing significant headwinds on its own.

    At Avast, we are always looking for ways to go beyond our core competency (antivirus). Now, does that mean that the core product has to be bloated? Absolutely not! But what we have to figure out now is how to best reconcile the various interests, and stitch the pieces together. I admit we have lost some focus lately -- and there's things to be fixed. But what you said above is just extreme.

    Thanks
    Vlk
     
  10. RejZoR

    RejZoR Lurker

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    Times change(d) Vlk. When Google emerged, internet was in its infancy and MSN and Ask Jeeves were the pinnacle of search tech. If you try entering search market today, you'll crash and burn like a tiny meteor entering the atmosphere. No matter what you'll do, there are massive established players with pretty much unlimited resources (relatively speaking). Only best thing one can pull out of it is getting a job at Google or selling a pilot project for few millions and if it's good, Google will make billions from it. Meaning you technically still lost.

    I perfectly understand what avast! is trying to achieve, expand into other fields because AV segment is so saturated with strong existing players, but frankly, all this would only make sense as separate tools. Just like I don't want an integrated food blender in my car, the same way I don't want some stupid junk file cleaner in my antivirus. Especially not the kind that wants to delete 1GB of data and can't be bothered to tell me what files exactly. Years and years of testing and using such tools thought me that I should NEVER trust an app that wants to clean large amounts of data and doesn't tell me what it's about to delete.

    Also, the fact that all these tools are tied to a single service is a no go. If one day I decide I don't want to use avast! anymore (or because I tend to test different AV's very often), I'll also have to ditch your password service since it's tied to your core product and same goes for everything else you'll offer. Maybe you think this will force me to stay with your product, but will just piss me off even more in the end because I'll have tons of extra work to migrate everything to some other service and get used to the way how that one works. And people tend to follow the same logic. Sure, your view from a corporate perspective is tying customers to your products. But from consumer perspective, that's exactly what we don't want. It's the very same reason why I absolutely hate everything Apple related. They produce somewhat quality products and then f**k them all up with their moronic iTunes and all the dependency on it. Guess how much I hated stupid Zune service when I had to deal with my sisters Lumia. Yeah. Same stupid corporate closed "ecosystem".

    So please, don't go that way. Make separate apps and services and present them well on your webpage. And don't be too bloody intrusive about them within the core program itself like you are for the silly Google Chrome. If I've closed the popup for 5th time without installing and I already have a browser other than IE/Edge set as default, what makes you think I want the damn Chrome? I think I'm clear enough about this matter.
     
  11. clocks

    clocks Registered Member

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    I'm not sure. I don't know if I should reinstall Avast on his PC, or go with Panda or something for a while.
     
  12. boredog

    boredog Registered Member

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    Yes yes Bing is what Microsoft uses LOL
     
  13. boredog

    boredog Registered Member

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    All the best search engines collect all your data, including all your web searches and even your MIC. Sounds Orwellian to me
     
  14. Rolo42

    Rolo42 Registered Member

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    Sorta. If you're going to compete with, say, LastPass, then you have to make a faster/better/cheaper LastPass; otherwise, where's the innovation?

    Doubloons to Donuts that's a big reason they are included in all the suites. Yes, password management is a crucial layer of security (while making life easier--which pretty much never happens with security) but repeat business is pretty crucial to...um...business.

    Indeed. Now take a dip to cool off.

    Get it? Sheep dip? Sheep....dip....? :D
     
  15. boredog

    boredog Registered Member

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    I don't see an extra browser as bloat either. I use Quietzone and they install their own Firefox TOR browser and I like it a lot.
     
  16. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I have not had Avast installed on any of my computers for many years. I never liked the new user interface introduced in v5, and greatly prefered the old UI. However, I guess the general concensus was that the new UI was big improvement over the old one, and my opinion was in the minority. I've just installed the beta to try it, since it's been quite some time since I've installed it, and I wasn't currently using any antivirus. I did a custom install and unchecked 11 items to prevent them from being installed, as I want just a very basic antivirus. I did however leave the software updater selected as this is something I consider useful, but disabled many other items include web filtering as I never use that with any antivirus. For me personally, having all the extras there was not really an issue, as it was so easy install only what I wanted. However, I do agree with the notion that less things should be installed by default, as of course, the average user is just going to do a standard install and end up with a lot of extras which they may not want. Not only would this be an annoyance, I guess it could lead them uninstalling Avast due it being too bloated, if they aren't aware it is possible to choose what gets installed.

    I configured Avast so that it would scan for PUPs, and always prompt me for action when threats are found. After which, I let Avast run it's initial scan, which found one virus, and an updated version of Adobe AIR. There was a big issue here. While Avast found an infection, and gave me the option to remove it, it provided no information about the infection, such as the name of the inection, and the infected file. I decided to let Avast remove this mystery infection anyway, and afterwards went to the virus chest to see what had been removed. It turns out, it was a false positive. It had quarantined the SMPlayer executable due to a generic detection of it. It is actually is a clean file, and VirusTotal confirms, Avast is the only AV which detects it. At least, I was given the option to restore the file, and whitelist it to prevent it from being wrongly detected again, so it's not all bad news. However, the issue for me, is not the false positive, but the fact that Avast wouldn't tell me what it had detected. On a positive note, the update of Adobe AIR went fine, and I liked that the update was done silently.

    I then did a Quick Scan. I found a serious limitation, in that after the scan has completed and the found threats are shown, there is no option to ignore items you don't want detected again. There is a "do nothing" action, which stops threats from being quarantined. However, the threats will be detected again in the next scan. If you want to ignore items, you can let them be quarantined, and then tell Avast then restore them form the virus chest, with "restore and add to exclusions." However, this is an unacceptable workaround in my opinion.

    So far, Avast is very light. Considering I find just about all antiviruses to be too heavy, I'm quite impressed by this. I've seen various posts on Wilders about Avast being light, but I never really believed it, becuase, to give one example, many people find Bitdefender to be light, but I find it to be quite heavy and cause noticable slowdowns on my systems. The impact on my system when I'm not running scans is barely noticable, even when I open a folder in Explorer containing many

    I actually really like the user interface, and from looking at screenshots of the 2015 version at Softpedia, the UI in the 2016 version is a big improvement in my opinion. So far, (and it's only been an hour), I am really liking this new version of Avast. I certainly hope that the issues with not being able to easily ignore threats, and the initial scan not showing the what was actually detected are
     
  17. Handen

    Handen Registered Member

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    Give this man another cigar!

    Avast trying to make cleanup tools, password managers, browsers and other things integrated into their core product is a horrendous waste of time and development dollars. If you want to release other things and release and market them as other things. It's great for Avast to want to make a password manager. Fine.. Do it! Use the Avast name to push it. But market it as it's own product and service. Lumping this stuff into a 'suite' just cheapens the product and I guarantee only a tiny fragment of your user base would even bother with it. Ask Trend. They tried a password manager for years and ended up largely abandoning it. It still has the old 2005 PC-Cillan interace but they keep on bundling it. How many people do you know using the Trend or Norton password managers? Zero? Probably. How many people do you know signed up for the Norton Cloud? Probably only a handful. If people want cloud they use one of the 'players' in the business not their antivirus vendor. Consumers aren't dumb (usually) they know an AV won't ever be able to do a secure safe and feature rich password manager like Dashlane so why would they use it?

    RejZoR brings up an important point - vendor lock. NEVER a good idea! People are shoe-horned into Apple junk now due to their investment in iTunes. That vendor lock is costing them in multiple ways especially since they are now stuck with inferior products. Vendor locking your password manager into the AV you 'currently' use is a terrible idea. It reminds me of those people that dropped thousands into Betamax or HDCD.

    Avast is an AV. Nobody will ever say "I'm installing Avast so I can use their cool password manager!"... F-Secure has been learning a hard lesson about this.. Freedome isn't working out. Their cloud service is closing in a few days. They keep trying 'stuff' and keep realizing they won't attract a single customer by doing this and their AV will suffer as developers are pulled into other projects.
     
  18. digmor crusher

    digmor crusher Registered Member

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    Vlk, if you ask the question on here what is wrong with Avast 80% of the users here will say too much bloat, its just the way it is here. Now probably 80% of your users will have no clue what bloat is, their just happy using Avast. My opinion is just make a program that does the job, no popup adds, no secret installs such as Chrome or Dropbox, for all the other Avast add ons make them opt-in instead of opt-out. Some of your add ons should probably be tossed such as the infamous Grimefighter or software updater, an AV is not meant to do these things, thus the bloat label.
     
  19. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    +1 on cleanup add-ons. Total Snake Oil. I hate to think of the money avast spent acquiring Jumpshot which was renamed Grimefighter after avast purchased them. I don't know how many computer's were rendered unbootable or internet lost after running it. Grimefighter used a grub loader and that caused havoc on a lot of people's computers when coming out of "sleep" if it ever did get out of "sleep". Then avast basically dropped the whole grub concept, recoded and renamed Grimefighter to Cleanup so it can run within windows, and still people are having issues.
     
  20. Rompin Raider

    Rompin Raider Registered Member

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    Thanks for the discussion vlk...not an easy market with the ever emerging attacks from a growing and intelligent hacker/attack side...especially when you have to try and cover the wide spread OS systems still in use ....obviously a large XP crowd still around plus the W10 evolving side, which itself is a challenge.
     
  21. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    I agree about Windows 10 being a challenge for AV companies. Now that Windows 10 is considered a service and Microsoft throwing out major service updates in November with Threshold 2 and next year with Redstone, I think Windows 10 will be a moving target for AV companies.
     
  22. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I installed the network threat scanner today to try it. But, it doesn't work on my computer. Scans won't complete.


    However, on a positive note, Avast is still being very light indeed. When the final version is released, I may end up installing it on customer's computers instead of 360 TSE.
     
  23. Blackcat

    Blackcat Registered Member

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    :thumb::thumb: They also tried to appeal to the "teen market" with their garish colors of their programs' GUI's.

    Transferring people to these new projects has meant, IMHO, that their level of support has definitely dropped compared to a few years ago; direct support, online support and forum support.
     
  24. vlk

    vlk AV Expert

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    Interesting, where is the information that Freedome isn't working out coming from?
     
  25. Rolo42

    Rolo42 Registered Member

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    I'm interested in others' thoughts on HTTPS scanning and the new implementation of it (locally-issued certificates).
     
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