Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus 12.0.0.1125

Size: 94.6 MB

Developer: Avira GmbH

License / Price: Ad-supported / $0

Operating Systems: Windows XP / Vista / XP X64 / Vista64 / 7 / 7 x64

Freeware antivirus that provides effective protection against computer viruses

Avira AntiVir Personal seems to be the right choice for all those who are searching for a solution with decent performance and regular updates, just to be sure infections stay away from their precious data.

The developers over at Avira have always offered a well-organized interface, and their latest antivirus solution makes no exception to this rule. Fortunately, although it's supposed to fight against viruses, the application comes with a handy user interface that lets you configure it with ease.

Avira only offers a bunch of settings, so advanced users should have no problem to deal with them, although beginners should too find the whole application quite easy to use.

The installation process is not that pleasant though. If you have Windows Defender installed, Avira advises you to remove it before continuing the installation. We chose “No” because it would make much more sense to use Avira together with Windows Defender, and not as a single solution.

Continuing the installation brings you to another important moment: you must decide whether you wish to install a toolbar, which is actually the reason why the app is marked as ad-supported.

Scanning is the kind of process that requires minimal interaction from the user. Choose the hard-disk you want to scan and let Avira do its magic. Scanning is not too fast though, and you may have to wait a little while to get rid of the worms. The speed of the scanning process obviously depends on the amount of data stored on your computer, so more files means more time.

Avira promises to protect your computer against viruses, worms and Trojans AntiDialer protection as well as against dialers and rootkits, spyware and adware. In addition, there are dedicated tools to provide mail and web protection, plus a separate firewall to make sure you're going to stay on the safe side.

In the end, Avira's antivirus solution seems just right for those who want nothing more than a software capable of blocking viruses and Trojan horses. The interface is more than decent, but a faster scanning process would be great. Still, what you pay is what you get, and Avira is clearly a smart pick.

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus description

Limitations:
· Not for Commercial or Business use
· Nag screen

What's New in This Release:

Increased stability and reliability:
· All components have been made more resilient in order to resist against targeted malware attacks which are more and more aggressive. This includes, but it is not limited to, the ability to function without many registry keys, better protection against process termination, component deletion and many others.
· The repair functionality for various malware families has been improved.

Decreased resource usage and faster initialization time:
· Many optimizations in all modules, re-usage and recycling of components that have already been loaded in memory lead to a lower memory consumption. Because the engine is loaded only once, the overall initialization time of all modules has been improved.

Improved usability:
· The usability of many actions which require user interaction or are used very often has been improved: installation, configuration and control of the user interface.
· Some places where an information slide-up had to be shown have been e...

Users are advised to pay attention while installing this ad-supported application:
· Offers to download or install software or components (Ask Toolbar) that the program does not require to fully function
· Offers to change the default search engine for web browsers installed in the system
· Displays ad banners or other types of advertising material during its runtime