Adware Report: Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Review
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Product: Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Price: $28.15 Vendor: Avira Editor Rating: 3 stars |
Pros
+ Extremely effective at detecting new viruses
+ Small footprint - consumes little memory or CPU
Cons
- Short testing history
- Recently failed an independent certification test
- Poor customer support
Avira AntiVir Review
Avira AntiVir is a super-lightweight A/V product that incorporates advanced heuristics to detect new viruses well before other products do. However, the program can fall behind in updates, so its reactive capabilities aren't as good as some other products. Customer support is also largely limited to those who are willing to pay for the privilege.
Usability
Installation of Avira Antivir was fast and easy, taking less than 5 minutes to finish. Installation is guided by an easy step-by-step wizard. We had to reboot our PC after installation.
Effectiveness
Avira has been recently certified by two independent testing labs (ICSA and VB100%). These tests certify that a particular A/V product successfully detects and disinfects all known viruses without generating false positives. It also recently received an Advanced+ certification from AV-comparatives, which is a good measure of how well an A/V product detects new, unknown viruses. However, it recently (October 2006) failed the VB100% certification test. This, combined with the fact that Avira has a relatively short testing history, may possibly indicate that this product could occasionally fall behind and leave your PC vulnerable to certain threats.
(Editor's Note: AntiVirus tests should be performed by specialized testing labs to ensure that dangerous viruses are not released onto the internet.)
Ease of Use
While Avira Antivir is relatively easy to use, there is certainly room for improvement. The main window displays the current status of the antivirus and mailguard engines as well as the last virus definition update. To start a scan, you'll need to click on the second tab, click on one of the options (ie: "Local Hard Disks"), and then click the magnifying glass icon. While this is straightforward enough to an expert user, novice users may find this confusing the first time out.
Avira's main screen is easy enough for expert users, but novices may have a hard time with it.
One thing to watch out for is to make sure that you set up a scheduled scan on the "Scheduler" tab ... Avira doesn't do this automatically for you. Once this is done, you can more or less allow the program to run invisibly in the background and forget that it's running.
Avira uses few system resources, making it a good choice for older computers.
Updates
Avira automatically connects to the internet once a day and downloads updates. You can also manually start an update from the main overview screen.
Other Features
Avira is a small, lightweight app with few features that runs well on older, slower computers.
The program covers the basics: it automatically integrate with your email client and scan incoming attachments for viruses, quarantines infected files, and scans for certain types of spyware and trojans (which makes it a helpful thing to run in conjunction with a dedicated anti-spyware product). Avira focuses on maintaining a small footprint with their A/V product, which means that you won't find certain bells and whistles that are common in other products (such as virus knowledge bases, embedded customer support, or registry protection).
Yet despite the lack of advanced features, Avira Antivir is known for having a superior heuristic engine that is vastly superior than other products at detecting new, unknown viruses (it recently scored nearly 25% higher than the next best product on the Proactive portion of the AV-comparatives test).
Customer Support
As with many A/V companies, customer support is severely limited. A user forum is provided, but many of the posts are in German. Telephone and email support is fee-based, and there is no live chat. Avira will be a good choice for those comfortable with self-support.
Summary
We have mixed opinions about Avira Antivir. While it is perhaps the leading product on the market for detecting brand new viruses, it can fall behind in its protection against known threats (as evidenced by a short release history and recently failing a VB100% test). The price is right, but customer support is severely lacking. This product would probably be best for those with on older computers on which other A/V products cause too much of a slowdown.
Free Trial: Yes
Download Avira AntiVir
Avira AntiVir is a super-lightweight A/V product that incorporates advanced heuristics to detect new viruses well before other products do. However, the program can fall behind in updates, so its reactive capabilities aren't as good as some other products. Customer support is also largely limited to those who are willing to pay for the privilege.
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Adware Report (http://www.AdwareReport.com) delivers objective news and reviews about the best and the worst spyware removal products.