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avast! 8 for Windows 8 arrives

Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

  • Updated:

avast iconToday the antivirus giant, avast!, released its brand new antivirus suites for Windows 8. The new suite is redesigned to fit the Windows 8 aesthetic as well as adding a bunch of features for both its paid and free users.

While avast! does boast a redesign, it’s rather minor. The security suite isn’t designed for the Modern UI, but does feature a home tab with big, touch friendly buttons. The home tab also features a quick status report so you know if the app is functioning correctly or needs you to perform an action. You can access common features like virus scan and statistics quite easily.

New to avast! 8 is the Software Updater, which alerts you to what apps are out of date. In the free version, avast! Free Antivirus, users can only be taken to the software developer’s site to download the latest version while paid subscribers to avast! can download and update the program from within the app itself. This is especially useful for updating plugins like Java and Flash Player as there seems to be a new exploit just about every week.

avast! 8 home tab

avast! 8 also wages war against toolbars. The new Browser Cleanup feature lets the application scan the toolbars you have installed and will alert users to which ones use malicious tactics to change your settings. While other antivirus apps include toolbars, avast! 8 doesn’t. Instead, it includes a small extension that monitors web links to see if you’re about to click on something malicious.

Paid users can look forward to the new Data Shredder feature, which securely deletes your sensitive files. The way it works is random zeros and ones are written where the file was located so that it’s impossible to recover that data. Deleting files from the Recycle Bin only erases the file’s location, allowing other files to be written in that location.

avast! 8 summary

avast! Premiere users can now remotely access computers running avast! 8 with the AccessAnywhere feature. Windows with Windows Remote Desktop has this feature, but now avast! 8 includes it.

Download avast! Free Antivirus now.

Lewis Leong

Lewis Leong

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