Avast! Home Edition is a free antivirus software designed to protect your computer from any viral threats. You can use it for up to 60 day without registering it. Afterwards, you will be prompted to register for free in order to get a license key valid for 14 moths.

The program can be run along other antivirus or software, but issues can occur regarding compatibility matters. For example, the WebShield module encountered compatibility problems with the ZoneAlarm's privacy blocking feature. However, the producers are working on fixing this problem together with the ZoneLabs team. They also offer a solution for overriding problems such as these. Anyway, it is best if you only use a single antivirus/firewall software at the time, as various errors may occur rendering security software unusable, and thus increasing the risk factor.

The program consists of three modules: the Avast! Virus Recovery Database Generator, The Avast! On-Access Scanner, and the Virus Scanner. The On-Access Scanner provides protection for your emails, local network activity, Outlook/Exchange and Internet activity. The virus scanner allows you to perform in-depth scans of your system using the program's interface or the explorer context menu. The 'resident protection' will run as a background service and will scan all accessed executable files, documents or emails.

The interface has a nice and intuitive design which makes the program very easy to use. However the complete configuration of all the settings regarding all the features, took me a little longer. The most important thing was the actual protection it provided, so I tested it using EICAR (European Expert Grpoup for IT Security) test files. The On-Access protection failed the EICAR test when I downloaded the test files using HTTP and HTTPS protocols. However the virus scanner passed the EICAR test by successfully removing the 'malware' test files.