Avast Free Antivirus 2014 is Faster, Leaner and Meaner [Review]

Avast Free Antivirus 2014 final has been released, it is lighter, faster and meaner. Avast has released 2014 line of products Avast Free Antivirus 2014, Avast Antivirus 2014 and Avast Internet Security 2014 and Avast Premier Antivirus 2014. Avast has redesigned their interface to look simple at the same time modern too and added new technologies hardened mode and DeepScreen.

Avast says their AV is up to 10 times faster and leaner than before, you won’t even notice when it running in the background. Avast 2014 to deliver 250 daily micro-updates, “arriving every 3-5 minutes, to keep you constantly protected against new threats – even ‘zero-day’ malware”.

DeepScreen technology allows avast! to take intelligent decisions about new or unknown files.

Till now Avast AutoSandbox prevents any unknown program from running on your computer, now 2014 version has introduced DeepScreen technology and hardened mode, while former is successor to AutoSandbox which is upgraded with technologies such as dynamic binary translation and dyna-gen.

“DynaGen is a technology that dynamically generates signature updates based on artificial intelligence that sits inside the algorithm responsible for analyzing suspicious files.”

Disable Avast DeepScreen technology

Open Avast user interface>Settings>Antivirus uncheck, Enable DeepScreen.

Hardened mode is aimed at inexperienced users such as grandmas. It is available in two modes: moderate and aggressive. Moderate Setting doesn’t allows files with poor reputation to run and Aggressive setting lets you run only whitelisted apps.

When an app has been blocked or prevented from starting by hardened mode “avast protected your PC” popup will be displayed from system tray with the message ” avast hardened mode prevented a program from starting on your computer ..”and offers an option to add it as an exclusion.

You can manage all exclusions or manually add paths or URLs for programs to be excluded from DeepScreen and Hardened mode here- Settings>Antivirus>Exclusions.

Enabling Hardened mode in Avast 2014

Hardened mode is not enabled by default, you can, here is how.

Open Avast user interface>Settings>Antivirus, select Enable Hardened mode.

Shields have been redefined and they’re now reduced to three: File shield, Mail shield and web shield. File shield contains Instant messaging and p2p shield functionality where as web shield contains Network Shield and Script Shield functionality. You can find status of these on Avast Settings in Active Protection tab.

Avast Online Security Plugin

Avast online security plugin for browsers, currently available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome provides protection against phishing attacks, shows website reputation ratings, auto-redirects mistyped URLs to correct ones. And Do-not-track detects and blocks unwanted advertising and prevents analytics sites from secretly tracking you.

Rescue Disk comes to Avast Free Antivirus as well

Avast Free Antivirus 2014 offers Rescue Disk, you can create bootable CD or USB (which contains your Avast installation) from Tools section which you can use for offline scanning and cleaning on an infected computer.

Avast 2014 products standalone/offline Installer links

Avast 2014 installer or setup has been reduced in size from 120 MB to 81 MB and now offered through stub installer instead of full, don’t worry! we’re providing offline installer link below.

Avast Free Antivirus 2014 offline installer

Download Avast Free Antivirus 2014

Avast Pro Antivirus 2014 offline installer

Avast Pro Antivirus 2014

Avast Premier 2014 offline installer

Avast Premier 2014

Avast Internet Security 2014 offline installer

Avast Internet Security 2014

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Avast 2014,
Avast Free Antivirus 2014