We have reviewed Rising 2009 before and found the program to still kind of have that beta feel. However, Rising Antivirus 2011 is a completely different story. One can now say that Rising 2011 or version 23 is really competing on the levels of Free AVG and Avast. The new version includes cloud based scanning, extensive and improved virus detection capability, and more. However, one problem I ran into on the 64 bit test system was that the Trojan shield, Browser protection, usb disk protection etc. didn't seem to install. This is contrary to what the Rising website reports that is included with the free version. So I was a little bummed that my free version didn’t include these protections. One can take a look at the test systems screen compared with another websites screenshot.
Regardless of being bummed about some of the missing features, I couldn’t be more than happy with the performance of Rising Antivirus 2011. The minute after I installed the program and restarted (went seamlessly by the way), the Rising Antivirus Real Time shield detected and neutralized a virus. The virus ironically was Malware Pro, which I downloaded for a legitimate review a while back. Simply viewing the downloads folder on the test system brought an instant virus detected alert. I was really impressed with the speed that Rising 2011 found the virus especially since I frequently install free antivirus (every 2 days) on the test system and haven’t found viruses for a while.
The speed of Rising 2011 scanning is also impressive. The Quick Scan took only 57 seconds to complete and scanned about 2,000+ files. While scanning Rising 2011 used a very modest 50 megabytes of RAM and about 20 percent CPU power. While CPU usage is on the high side, Rising can scan at about 400 files per second which translates to a very impressive 8 to 9 megabytes per second of scanning and peak usage around 14 megabytes. This makes Rising 2011 one of the fastest free antivirus that I am currently aware of. A full system scan completed in just over 1 hour against 100 gigabytes of data.
In addition to providing an offline setup file installation creation tool (like the previous version), Rising offers a new rescue disk creator. The creator puts the latest virus definitions and scanning engine conveniently on to a CD or flash drive.
Finally, Rising 2011 offers cloud protection. Rising claims that they have established the largest cloud based scanning facility in Asia. If this is true, this means that Rising is literally on the front lines of the epicenter of virus creation. This means that Rising will essentially give excellent zero day detection when compared to rival free antivirus.
Keep in mind that this review only focuses on the new features of Rising 2011. I breezed over the original features. For those simply read the original review below.
