Avast might be on target by getting rid of support for old OSs, but avast 5.0
still can't do a boot-time scan on 64 bit machines. Kind of reminds me of the
song (Mr. In-between).
--
I mastered Wordstar graphics!


"Noel Paton" wrote:

It's now 8 years since Win9x became obsolete with the release of XP.
I suspect that the engine that Avast uses is having a drastic rewrite, in
order to cope with Win 7 and beyond, and the cost of coding for Win64, as
well as Win32 has meant that the older Win9x has to go. It costs large sums
of money to make software compatible with such different OS's - and the
income streams for Win 9x are getting smaller every day as machines running
Win9x die or are simply replaced. At some point it becomes vastly uneconomic
to support the limited number of users remaining.
That point was probably reached some time ago - and Avast should be thanked
for their support since then, rather than castigated as penny-pinchers.
Win2k will be the next to go - in 2011. I suspect that Win XP AV support
will finally die around 2015 (or maybe earlier).
The interesting question is when Win32 support will end completely - both in
the OS and in AV. From my perspective, MS should bite the bullet, and end
Win32 OS's with Win7 - The majority of new machines here in the UK seem to
be configured as Win64 already, and this process is accelerating. What may
eventually happen is that XP comes bundled as standard as a VM for running
Win32 apps - but unsupported. We've already seen the beginnings of this with
'XP Mode' availability in some Win7 versions.

--
Noel Paton
CrashFixPC

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
www.crashfixpc.co.uk
"webster72n" wrote in message
...


"Mike M" wrote in message
...
webster72n wrote:

Corday:
They must have grown tired of supplying the free version for 'us'.

What do you mean? Avast! are saying that whether you wish to pay or not
their support for Win 9x systems finishes at the end of this year.
Something that has been known now for many months. It's not that this is
a surprise, Avast! have at least had the courtesy to warn their Win 9x
customers well in advance of this change.

I totally agree with you, Mike and that's exactly what I meant.
People don't seem to matter any more in this new world of ours, it is
business only which counts, especially in our neck of the woods.
Very sad, I must say. H.

--
Mike M


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