Avira AntiVir - best antivirus program of this or any generation - and it's free!

[mbigna]

Here is a comparison review of the three most popular free AV programs:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170587/can_you_trust_free_antivirus_software.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170674/free_antivirus_software.html

 

[c627627]

I'm surprised they rated Avira high. Over the years I've seen countless reputable sites score Avira low in contradiction to my own personal experiences and tests done here at the forums.


This led me to take any antivirus software reviews by commercial sites with a grain of salt.

 

[EarthDog]

Every review I have read rated them at the highest detection rate c6... weird you didnt see the same.

Anyway, I second Avira for free AV, no doubt. Especially over the bloatware that is Norton, Mcafee, and that free AVG.

 

[Route44]

I, too, take these tests with a grain of salt because I have read enough of theses publications and their tests to know they will many times contradict each other.

Nevertheless, from my experience on several tech boards both Avira and Avast really are very good as many testify to their effectiveness. And Avast's interface isn't really difficult to learn at all.

I run Avast on two laptops and our second home PC. Couple the free version with the free Superantispyware version and the free Online Armor with HIPS and it makes for great low resource layered protection.

 

[Marshmallow64]

I use to use AVG, but after reading up on AV, I switched to Avira and it caught a lot of things AVG didnt.

 

[threeme2189]

Avira Antivir FTW!
And the best thing about it is the title for the virus scan window.
Can anyone remember what its called?

 

[c627627]

Haha. Star Wars is not cool.


But on the topic, let me be the fisrt to cast the stone, Avira's interface is not user friendly and is criminally non-intuitive. I couldn't make it more complicated if I tried.

So if Avira wasn't so good at finding nasty stuff almost all others miss, I would drop them over that. But their definitions still rule, so .

 

[threeme2189]

I have never had a problem scanning my computer with Avira, it's not that complicated.
What's wrong with the interface?

 

[c627627]

Oh, I raised this question a long time ago at Avira forums and they didn't agree with me but placement of 'Configuration' is just a bad start, from there on they have a tiny Expert mode tucked in the corner which YOU MUST CHECK to ONLY then gain access to Configuration options which matter.

You can't turn off pop-ups until they actually appear and then you have like a second to catch them to CHECK the "Don't show this again" box.. How does this help me once I made an image of my operating system? It doesn't, so that's just crazy not to have an option for that.


But like I said, I'll gladly deal with the poorly made Config interface since their definitions rock

 

[Audioaficionado]

I tried it recently and dumped it after a few weeks due to it popping up some BS "Buy Me" stuff just about every day.

There was a check box on the nag screen I found to kill the nag.

I'm surprised they rated Avira high. Over the years I've seen countless reputable sites score Avira low in contradiction to my own personal experiences and tests done here at the forums.


This led me to take any antivirus software reviews by commercial sites with a grain of salt.

It might be a lot of false positives too. I see it tagging things in my storage hard drive that I downloaded years ago and know to be OK. I just ignore those and don't allow them to be quarantined.

I'd prefer just a daily system scan and let me manually scan the storage drives.

Scanning all the hard drive MBRs is a rockin' great feature

I've used AVG for years, but everytime it found stuff, it often couldn't do anything about it. I'm on Avira AntiVir now and liking it so far.

 

[redduc900]

You can't turn off pop-ups until they actually appear and then you have like a second to catch them to CHECK the "Don't show this again" box.. How does this help me once I made an image of my operating system? It doesn't, so that's just crazy not to have an option for that.

If you're referring to the pop-up from the tray after Antivir updates itself, it can be disabled by setting the Display Mode to Invisible. Launch AntiVir and click the Scheduler tab under Administration | Right-click on Daily Update and choose "Edit job" | Click Next until you reach the Display Mode screen | Choose Invisible from the drop-down list.