Softworld editor's review -
Excellent antivirus solution
Avira AntiVir Personal at this moment is a very popular antivirus software. The moment you start the installation process you will be prompted to choose between Express and Custom setup. For the purpose of this test i picked Express. Surprisingly for a antivirus application the install process was a very short one.
After the installation has been completed, the program scans for updates. The same as with the install process, this procedure did not take too long to be accomplished (about 2 minutes). An aspect that i really want to mention is that when the install was finished it was not required to restart the PC.
The main interface of the program looks very good. What i like a lot is that there are no complicated menus or something similar. At the left side of the main window you have three categories: Overview, Local protection and Administration. In the first one you can update the application, and activate or deactivate a security module.
In the same section at the bottom of the page you also have a Scan system now option. The duration of the scanning process really depends on how much content you have stored on your hard drive. What i like about the Scan option is that at any time you can decide to stop it.
In the Overview category there is the Events section. Basically here you can select from the available security modules the ones that you want to run. You have Scanner, Scheduler and Guard. Beside that there is also an Updater section. Now going into Local protection, there are 2 subcategories: Scanner and Guard.
In the first one you can set the application to scan your Local Drives, Local Hard Disks, Removable Drivers, Windows System Directory, My Documents and Active Processes. If you don't want to scan those specific places you can very easily select manually the ones that you want. On top of that you can also select Complete or Quick system scan.
In Guard subcategory you have a statistic with all the files that have been detected by the program. Also there are fields where you can see the last file, virus or unwanted program found. In the last category, Administration, you have Quarantine and Scheduler.
A very cool function is certainly the Scheduler. Basically you can set Avira to scan various locations on your hard drive and to make updates Immediately, Daily and Weekly. You can very easily set the time, the day when you want the scan or update to be performed. An option that i found to be extremely useful is that you can set the application to scan or update at different time intervals.
At the top of the main window there can be found basic menu elements such as File, View, Update and Help. In the Update section you can choose to manually update the program or select the automatic procedure.
What i really like about Avira is the fact it runs completely silent without bothering you with all kind of messages or something similar. On top of that it is extremely light on your system resources. After i installed the application i entered in task manager and i was surprised to see that there were no significant modifications in the CPU usage and Memory fields.
During the test this antivirus program managed to provide a constant high level of security. In my opinion Avira AntiVir Personal is a top notch application. It can easily compete with some of the best antivirus softwares including AVG Antivirus, and even defeat them.
Good:
-fast install process that doesn't require restart
-excellent level of security
-good looking interface
-totally silent and extremely light on your system resources
-very useful Scheduler feature
-plenty of scan options
-fast update process
Bad:
-none so far
Version 12.0.0.898 reviewed on: 16 Feb 2012
Publisher's description
Avira AntiVir Personal protects your computer against dangerous viruses, worms, trojans and costly dialers.
Avira Antivir Personal gives you the following functions:
-control center for monitoring, administering, and controlling the entire program
-central configuration with user friendly standard and advanced options and context-sensitive help
-scanner with profile-controlled and configurable scan for all known types of virus and malware
-integration into the Windows Vista user account control allows you to carry out tasks requiring administrator rights
-guard for continuous monitoring of all file access attempts
-integrated quarantine management to isolate and process suspicious fies
-rootkit protection for detecting hidden malware installed in your computer system
-simple and quick updates to the program, virus definition and search engine through single file update and incremental VDF updates via a web server on the Internet
-extremely high virus and malware detection via innovative scanning technology including heurisitc scanning method
K7 TotalSecurity 11
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