Installing Avast Free Antivirus 6, which weighs in at 57MB, is quick and easy and best of all requires no reboot!  You will find after installation that desktop widgets have also been installed without your knowledge – these can be uninstalled easily later and also can be unselected when choosing custom install.

The actual interface of Avast remains almost totally unchanged from the previ0us version, which will be a positive to previous users who are accustomed to navigating the interface.  The tab based navigation makes it easy to navigate between different modes of operation and allows you to switch between them quickly as you browse what operations and information is available to you.  The standard red for danger and green for good is used in Avast in the different status screens so that users can be indicated to which areas need to be visited or checked out.

The features shipped with Avast include a Community IQ – Avast’s answer to the cloud, and AutoSandbox.  With the brand new addition of the AutoSandbox, Avast is one of the only free antivirus tools which includes a sandbox to run software in safely.  The AutoSandbox will automatically run suspicious programs in a sandbox – hence the name.  Programs ran in the sandbox are monitored for what files are accessed and other changes made to your system.  These changes are made in a virtual state so that if the suspicious program running in the sandbox adversely alters your data, it can be reversed.

The WebRep tool included with Avast is an add-on to Internet Explorer and Firefox which gives web results a reputation ranking and also any other websites visited.  The WebRep tool is powered by the Community IQ which makes use of the user base of Avast to help shape the reputation of websites.  The Avast community is very competent and passionate about the results of this service and can generally be trusted.  The WebRep toolbars can be uninstalled if users do not enjoy the several milliseconds of delay added to their daily web browsing.  Other small features include such things as gaming mode which will suppress antivirus notifications that may interrupt your games and intelligent scanning which only scans updated files.

Although the scanning engine is not the best in the world, it is within 90% of the detection rate of the leading scanning engines and will protect you from the most dangerous threats.  This is the only place where Avast measures below perfect.  Avast remains an all-around great free antivirus tool with one of the smallest resource footprints we have seen.

While most people would not even take into consideration the length of the installation process of software, the 2011 edition has slimmed down the procedure to only five steps.  During the install, you must opt out of the toolbar if you do not want your pages to load slower when surfing the web.  This is our major criticism of the software – that a toolbar which only minimally scans websites at the expense of excruciatingly slow web browsing comes bundled with the antivirus.  However, these type of nuisances are common and are to be expected with free editions of antivirus, and can be opted out of which is a major plus.

We are happy to say that the graphical interface is cleaner and no longer are products in general these days looking like they were designed by fisher price.  Web 2.0 excessive bling is being phased out in favor of minimalist and usable interfaces.  However, the banners at the bottom nagging you to purchase the upgraded AVG Internet Security 2011 can be a distraction.

The new features included in the 2011 edition of AVG Free Edition are smart scanning and the fact that the scanning engine is taken directly out of the paid edition.  In a move to keep up with other antivirus, smart scanning is essentially a community cloud driven feature that compares files with other users in order to help discriminate malicious from benign faster and more reliably.  Users can also opt out of this feature if they do not want to participate in this cloud community because of privacy concerns or otherwise.

Running and using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 will add about ten seconds to the boot up time of your computer typically and will marginally slow down performance in every running program.  This is the cost of running antivirus and to some people this is worthwhile for the protection benefits.  To users who want the fastest computer around, antivirus is obviously out of the question and is most likely never installed or used.  Scanning tests show that AVG has good but not super great detection compared to other software.

Is the 2011 edition worth upgrading to?  In our eyes yes you should upgrade especially because this is free software and although the changes are not huge, the common practise is to maintain up-to-date software in a landscape of ever upgrading threats that old software may be simply unable to detect.

While most people would not even take into consideration the length of the installation process of software, the 2011 edition has slimmed down the procedure to only five steps.  During the install, you must opt out of the toolbar if you do not want your pages to load slower when surfing the web.  This is our major criticism of the software – that a toolbar which only minimally scans websites at the expense of excruciatingly slow web browsing comes bundled with the antivirus.  However, these type of nuisances are common and are to be expected with free editions of antivirus, and can be opted out of which is a major plus.

We are happy to say that the graphical interface is cleaner and no longer are products in general these days looking like they were designed by fisher price.  Web 2.0 excessive bling is being phased out in favor of minimalist and usable interfaces.  However, the banners at the bottom nagging you to purchase the upgraded AVG Internet Security 2011 can be a distraction.

The new features included in the 2011 edition of AVG Free Edition are smart scanning and the fact that the scanning engine is taken directly out of the paid edition.  In a move to keep up with other antivirus, smart scanning is essentially a community cloud driven feature that compares files with other users in order to help discriminate malicious from benign faster and more reliably.  Users can also opt out of this feature if they do not want to participate in this cloud community because of privacy concerns or otherwise.

Running and using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 will add about ten seconds to the boot up time of your computer typically and will marginally slow down performance in every running program.  This is the cost of running antivirus and to some people this is worthwhile for the protection benefits.  To users who want the fastest computer around, antivirus is obviously out of the question and is most likely never installed or used.  Scanning tests show that AVG has good but not super great detection compared to other software.

Is the 2011 edition worth upgrading to?  In our eyes yes you should upgrade especially because this is free software and although the changes are not huge, the common practise is to maintain up-to-date software in a landscape of ever upgrading threats that old software may be simply unable to detect.