avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 is not only the best free antivirus product in the world, it may be the best antivirus product – free or paid. VirusBulletin recently described it as “Nothing short of a miracle”. It is not an old-fashioned signature detection product, avast Free antivirus is based on multiple protective layers that work together to provide award-winning security. New features match top detection with increased efficiency. Computer memory requirements for the new antivirus and antispyware engine have been cut in half. Scanning is 40 percent faster, saving both time and computer resources. Complete rootkit protection includes real-time detection to ward off initial installation, on-demand scanning and boot-time scans. The user friendly 5.0 has a new interface with easy-to-adjust settings, a context-sensitive help menu and graphs showing ongoing protection activities. Users can set the time and conditions for complete scans, with avast even waking up their computer from hibernation for midnight scans before putting it back to bed. The two major pathways for malware into a computer are the web and email, with around 80 percent of new infections caught through internet browsing. avast! provides separate defensive strategies for each. Web-borne infections are detected by the antivirus and anti-spyware engine while a site is being downloaded but before it is actually in the user’s computer. This stops infections from legitimate sites that have been hacked and had malicious code added – the source of 85 percent of all web-sourced infections. Shields monitor web sites for infected content and can identify malware by its behavior . The Mail Shield prevents the spread of malware via email by checking incoming and outgoing emails for suspect content. Malware from all sources is identified by signature and behavior. Signature detection, identifying malware by its mathematical sign, is supported by the frequent virus database updates.