Avira AntiVir

Avira AntiVir is a super-lightweight A/V product which  detect new viruses well before other products do. However, the program can fall behind in updates, so its reactive capabilities aren’t as good as some other products. Customer support is also largely limited to those who are willing to pay for the privilege.

Usability

Installation of Avira Antivir was fast and easy, taking less than 5 minutes to finish. Installation is guided by an easy step-by-step wizard. We had to reboot our PC after installation.

Updates

Avira automatically connects to the internet once a day and downloads updates. You can also manually start an update from the main overview screen.

Other Features

Avira is a small, lightweight app with few features that runs well on older, slower computers.

The program covers the basics:

It automatically integrate with your email client and scan incoming attachments for viruses, quarantines infected files, and scans for certain types of spyware and trojans (which makes it a helpful thing to run in conjunction with a dedicated anti-spyware product).

Avira focuses on maintaining a small footprint with their A/V product, which means that you won’t find certain bells and whistles that are common in other products (such as virus knowledge bases, embedded customer support, or registry protection).

Yet despite the lack of advanced features, Avira Antivir is known for having a superior heuristic engine that is vastly superior than other products at detecting new, unknown viruses (it recently scored nearly 25% higher than the next best product on the Proactive portion of the AV-comparatives test).

Your advantages:

• Safe protection against viruses, worms, Trojans and dialers
• Low system load
• Automatic updates
• Easy operation

Premium functions:

• Integrated detection of ad/spyware
• Extra protection through email scanner (POP3)
• Exclusive download server for faster updates
• User-defined update intervals
• Scan function for selected directories