Avast Pro

To get a good handle on what Avast really had in mind for the end of the
year, I Emailed the Sales Dept. asking if I upgraded from free to Pro if I'd
get support after 1/1/10. Part of their reply:
Thank you for your email, and your interest in avast! antivirus products.

We are sorry, the operating systems Windows 95/98/Me/NT4 will be supported
until the end of 2009.

If you are going to purchase our products, it is better for you to upgrade
your operating system to Windows XP " UP TO YOU"

You can download the latest version of avast! 4 Professional Edition from
this page:

--
I mastered Wordstar graphics!

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

Harry.


"Corday" wrote in message
...
To get a good handle on what Avast really had in mind for the end of the
year, I Emailed the Sales Dept. asking if I upgraded from free to Pro if
I'd
get support after 1/1/10. Part of their reply:
Thank you for your email, and your interest in avast! antivirus products.

We are sorry, the operating systems Windows 95/98/Me/NT4 will be supported
until the end of 2009.

If you are going to purchase our products, it is better for you to upgrade
your operating system to Windows XP " UP TO YOU"

You can download the latest version of avast! 4 Professional Edition from
this page:

--
I mastered Wordstar graphics!

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.
--
Mike M

"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

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

Crikey is it that many years since release, how times fly when you're having
fun g

John's using Avast on the XP machine, I have NOD32 installed on my Vista
partition but I've not really booted back into that one since installing
Windows 7 on another partition in October and I'm using Microsoft Security
Essentials on that OS with no problems.

As it's working out well it means I can avoid renewing NOD32 in June.

Not sure how long the XP machine will be in use but if Avast stopped for
that one I could put MSE on there as well.

--
Joan Archer
http://www,freewebs.com/crossstitcher

"Noel Paton" wrote in message
...
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

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


.

Depends on your definition of 'support' I guess, Noel. I can't see the likes
of Eset dropping XP support as soon as 2014/15. Indeed you can still
download NOD32 v2.7 for 9x (which even still runs in Win 95B!).

NT NOD32 v2 can be easily run as a standalone scanner, for instance on
BartPE and thumbdrives, though nod32.exe, amon.sys et al haven't been
updated since last Feb though the defs still are. Not sure if the
implication is they're no longer providing program updates for v2.7 but no
reason yet to assume that is the case.

I guess that users who keep running Me will want to avoid the outlay on a
more recent machine. In which case paying for AV while not ideal is
certainly the cheaper alternative. The point being that just because the
free ones will no longer support 9x, doesn't mean no AV will.

AB



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.

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