The World’s Most Popular Antivirus Avast! v5.1 For Home Users [ Freeware ]

As the calendar flapped over to 2011, Avast presented the world with its New Year gift – Avast! Free Antivirus v5.1 for home users. The best part of this antivirus solution is, of course, that its free. But, as all would agree, that would be a very crude metric to rate the antivirus. So lets look at some of the few features that makes it an appealing Antivirus solution.

Variety of protection shields:-

– Mail Shield for preventing malware in all incoming/outgoing e-mails including SSL communication.

-Stable and improved Web Shield against infected web pages, files, pages and java scripts downloaded from the internet.

– IM Shield against malicious files downloaded while using chat applications.

– Network Shield for protection against network-based viruses.

– Improved Behavior Shields which monitors the Operating System file system, registry hives for any suspicious behavior.

Faster:-

– Scanner remembers the safe files and thereby reduces the re-scans required for same file unless the file is modified.

– Faster application of antivirus updates

- Multi-threaded scanning promises accelerated scans.

Other features:-

– Very professional and simple Antivirus control User Interface.

– Silent Mode which detects full-screen applications like games and disables the annoying pop-ups and other on-screen notifications without degrading security.

– Improved real time anti-rootkit protection (Rootkit means a software which enjoys continued privileged access to a computer while actively hiding its presence from administrators).

– Boot-time scanner (64 bit support as well) which allows scans even before the operating system has started and before a virus can be activated

Well, quite impressive… Avast! also has paid versions of the antivirus software which includes features like Silent Firewall, Anti-spam, avast! Sandbox, command line scanner. Watch out this space  for more on the paid versions of Avast.

Download Avast! 5.1 Free Antivirus Here