Avast......huh??

Okay, I am feeling really dense right now but the harder I try to figure this out, the more confused I get.

1) With my previous AV program I could schedule the specific time and frequency for running a scan; i.e. everyday at 2:15 pm. As far as I can tell with Avast, you can only do that if you have the pro version. Does that mean I have to manually run a scan every day?

2) With my previous AV program, whenever I wanted to check an attachment on an email I could save it to disk and scan it with the program. It then gave me a message saying the scan was complete and no virus was found. When I do that with Avast I get a little message showing it is scanning the attachment but when it is finished scanning the message disappears without letting me know if there was a virus or not. Should I assume the absence of an all-clear message means that it is, in fact, all clear?

3) I have seen a number of threads on DG about Avast and people who use it seem to really like it. Why am I having such a tough time figuring out how it works? I have read the instructions from start to finish several times..... Maybe I need a brain scan. (Can Avast do that?) LOL