Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

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Features

Editor's Rating:
5.0 stars
Average User Rating:
3.5 stars (out of 1814 votes) Rate it!
Downloads:
19,025,206
Requirements:
Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Limitations:
No limitations
Date Added:
July 24, 2008
Previous Versions:

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Publisher's description of Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

From Avira:

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus is a comprehensive, easy to use antivirus program, designed to offer reliable free of charge virus protection to home-users only. Avira offers: Extensive Malware Recognition of viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, worms, etc. Automatic incremental updates of antivirus signatures, engine and entire software. Permanent virus protection, with Virus Guard real time monitoring. Install and configuration in just a couple of steps. Virus protection against known and unknown threats, using an advanced heuristic system. Scheduler where you can set the scanner to make automatic virus scans or updates on your system. Forum and phone support, Knowledge Base with virus descriptions available on Web site. Vista Support. Rootkit Detection and Removal. Version 8 adds an enhanced interface, a modularized AV-search engine for improved scan performance, an integrated failsafe security system, and SMTP support for AntiVir MailGuard.

Version 8.1.0.326 features new Fast Activation Tool (FACT), which enables the licensing of products on-line during installation.

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Editor's review of Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

5.0 stars
"Get all-the-time protection with AntiVir"

For a free antimalware and antivirus app that also runs in your system's background, AntiVir works surprisingly well. Its scans are flexible, allowing the user to fully scan all hard drives, choose a preloaded scan--for rootkits, for example--or customize a scan. Combining the antimalware with the antivirus is a luxury in a free scanner. After testing on several machines no viruses turned up, although several malicious hidden files did rear their heads. The heuristic scan can be turned on or off completely or partially, with three different intensity levels.

The quarantine is extensively thorough, too. The spreadsheet layout displays all relevant information about the quarantined file, and gives you options to scan it again, restore, delete, and more. The scheduler is fully customizable. Definition files are available at Avira's Web site if needed, and the help features are excellent, as well, with a description box relaying mouse-over information on each feature. Version 8.0 has introduced a faster engine and a faster definition file update, both of which are instantly noticeable improvements and yet still a bit slow.

Initial concerns about the real-time Guard protection hamstringing system performance proved groundless. Although we could shut off AntiVir and its Guard, there was no way to remove the icon from the system tray or stop the occasional ad placement by Avira. The Complete Scan is no longer numbingly slow, but it will pauses midscan to let you know when it's found a threat. That's good for killing nasties, but it also means that the scans needs baby-sitting.

Despite these hang-ups and the nag screen that follows updates, we found AntiVir to offer such effective protection with such a well-rounded set of features that as long as the definitions file updates keep coming, this app is our first line of defense.

User reviews of Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

Average user rating: 3.9 stars out of 1814 votes
My rating: 0 stars Write review

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5 stars

10 out of 14 people found this review helpful

Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

"You can not find better protection for free."

by goldengreeke on July 29, 2008

Pros: Avira's detection rate surpasses AVG and Avast, uses less resourses, easier to use, and offers top of the line protection. I also like it better than Norton and McAfee, and they are not free.

Cons: Nag screen to purchase.

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3 stars

7 out of 8 people found this review helpful

Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

"Good detection, mediocre removal."

by emperordarius on July 28, 2008

Pros: Good malware detection.
Light on resources.

Cons: Mediocre removal rate.
Doesn't have any self defense module, can be easily damaged by malware.
Doesn't have spyware or adware detection.
Slow update servers, often busy

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5 stars

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful

Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

"The Best"

by zornot on July 30, 2008

Pros: Tried all of them, and Avira consistently finds stuff the others miss.

Cons: Annoying nag screens; update server often too busy.

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5 stars

10 out of 11 people found this review helpful

Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

"Excellent Free NOD32 alternative with easy to track Reports~~"

by flavouride on July 27, 2008

Pros: -I've been using Antivir PE Classic for my PC since 7.x having learnt the NOD32 2.7 enterprise license from the company I work for won't cover NOD32 3.0 or Eset SS, presuming there will be limited support for the outdated version

-Unbroken chain of Advanced+ adwards from AV-Comparatives for On-Demand scans

-Automatically upgraded to 8.0 and then 8.1 without interference with the stability and integrity of the WinXP registry

-Easy to Schedule weekly scans and cleans

-Comprehensive reports make it easy to track malware alerts and specific updated files during automatic updates

-For more than a year Antivir PE has been getting along very well with Threatfire, Windows Defender and Firewall, IE7, and other XP SP2+ built-in security mechanisms

Cons: -Splash Screen on Windows Start-up

-Nag Screen after definition or programme updates

-Unable to set default action for real-time AV Guard and require a user to choose action from a list

-For these reasons I cannot recommend or install any copy of this excellent product to the Machines of my friends' who asked for my help. Since I am not prepared to advice them via phone or house calls whenever a Nag Screen or a Malware Alert pops out from any of their screens

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4 stars

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful

Version: Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 8.1.0.326

"Works very well,and it's free!"

by Ronald J Lee on August 24, 2008

Pros: Does a good job ,but,what do you do about the warnings?

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