Avira AntiVir Personal review

Banner is the price that you pay for that excellent AV product

Avira is superior to any other AV that I've used. It even detected some SymbianOS viruses on my PC before transferring to phone (therefore it also protected my Nokia phone !). Awesome !

By HopeLESS on 16 Mar 2010

Free Firewall AND AV

Comodo offers both and from my experience is very effective. It was the first firewall for Windows 7 yet has not been reviewed here.

By Manuel on 16 Mar 2010

but

you recommended this is magazine throughout 2009 as THE best free anti-virus package, and the offering has not changed one iota, nor has the competition. plus 30 secs on the internet will find you the solution to switch off both the "nag screen" advertising, and the equally annoying splash screen.

e.g. http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_n
ag.htm

plus who needs a firewall when there's Windows Firewall?

the only point i accept is about email attachments, but there is no excuse for opening attachments from unknown senders.

This review is a backtrack on a year of gushing praise. why?

By gavmeister on 17 Mar 2010

plus

when you get a piece of software, what you want is good performance from its core function, and that is malware detection. You say in the review that its 97% performance is higher than any other free package. to not recommend it is a downright dereliction of duty, and a straw poll round the PCPRO office to see how many of them are running Avira, or what indeed they are running, would be far more instructive than your random verdict.

By gavmeister on 17 Mar 2010

finally

sorry final rant: you say "dangerous attachments won't be spotted until you directly access them, [so] you could forward malware to others without realising it."

this is nonsense. forwarding before opening them yourself is not something for a piece of software to stop you doing, it is against how to behave as a responsible human being. do you also suggest we install a piece of software in our car to stop us drinking and driving?

By gavmeister on 17 Mar 2010

yet

@gavmeister you put forward some salient points, but the last one regarding forwarding attachments before opening it yourself...

I guess if the option is available for all the other software suites, it shouldn't be too unreasonable to want it in Avira too.
The last couple of group tests ended up being relatively close did they not?

By khellan on 17 Mar 2010

ok

@khellan, thanks your points are salient too!

The clinchers for me remain the malware detection - nothing else matters - and the wonderfully light footprint of Avira. all other anti-virus software is too resource-hungry for any laptop under 3GB RAM.

Don't listen to Darien people, just get Avira.

By gavmeister on 20 Mar 2010

version 10 released today

this review is already out of date - v10 of Avira 10 released today. suggest rethink in order

By gavmeister on 24 Mar 2010

Rather trust AVG?

"we'd rather trust our safety to AVG than put up with this sort of constant hectoring."

Unfortunately this is simply not possible, although installing AVG would stop all infections, because... on every computer except one on which I have tried installing AVG all I get is BSOD after BSOD after BSOD. So now I'm using Avira, which actually picked up a virus on IT guru's pendrive - much to his embarrassment!

By einstein9 on 30 Mar 2010

Avira Rocks

I don't mind the once-or-twice a day nag screens because I'm getting the #1 rated AV protection out there for free. The things it doesn't do are done by other programs: for example your ISP has an email virus scanner and you have Windows or preferably another firewall (Comodo or Zonealarm are free).

I looked at the extensive tests done at av-comparatives.org [an independent used by CNET and others] and Avira was clearly the best if you wanted detection and removal of malware - especially brand new viruses [through heuristics] where Avira was far out in front.

No single AV works perfectly, and I couple Avira personal [set to most sensitive heuristics] with two other resident programs: Comodo Firewall [set to safe mode], and WinPatrol.

I also run once-a-week Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Superantispyware manual scans for a first-class freeware "crossfire" effect.

I also run (resident) Spybot (with it's "Teatimer") but it does not seem to be up to snuff in the reviews.

My computer is only a 1.8 GHz Pentium with 512MB RAM running Win XP and those programs don't slow me down signficantly.

By The_Mick on 20 May 2010

Firewall??

I have no idea at all why you suggest not having a firewall is worthy of a black mark? I'll let you into a secret, Windows XP SP2, Vista and 7 have perfectly adequate firewalls, routers provide a hardware firewall.. why on earth would you want even more unnecessary software clogging up your machine??

And why do you want emails scanned? Do you forward emails without knowing what they are or why?

By chrisfixit on 16 Jun 2010

Update problems?

I gave this a try as you favour it over Kaspersky 2011 - and I'd be reluctant to go back to Norton after previous experience.
Easy to use, light-footprint and it claimed to fin a Trojan that KIS 2010 had missed (not that I'd noticed anything amiss)-
BUT I could NOT get it to update after many attempts.
Their forum showed this to be a long running problem that is not confined to me.
Does it a apply only to the free version, as I'm quite happy to pay for decent anti-virus?

By Walsallian on 23 Jul 2010

Agree with "chrisfixit"

I want to say I agree with "chrisfixit", he is right!
he said same what I wanted to say

By boelectronic on 20 Aug 2010