Avira has been known for its excellent virus detection rates. The antivirus capabilities of the new version 10 are no exception. The software really performs very well at this. However, when compared with the innovations that other new free antiviruses are releasing for 2010 and 2011, Avira falls behind. The big letdown in version 10 is that the program doesn’t include Avira Proactiv rule based and zero day based protections. Even free AVG, which I considered a fairly stripped down free antivirus, comes with zero day and cloud scanning capabilities. This protection is crucial in this day and age when virues are released every minute. The other misleading thing, by no fault of Aviras, is the fact that some download sites say that version 10 personal includes the proactive protection. However, this is only available on Avira AntiVir Premium at this time.
One of the newest things about Avira AntiVir Personal Version 10 is the revamped interface. The interface has been completely updated and now includes menus that collapse and expand with new icons. These improvements make using Avira significantly easier to use. The reporting functionality has also improved and now it’s easier to understand the functions of the antivirus engine. There are also different reporting options which include, default, extended, and complete for the more advanced user. In version 10 there are a lot of new scanning options, 10 different scanners to be exact (please see the screenshot for all of them). Some of the most notable are the quick scan, the scan for rootkits and active malware, and complete system scan etc. It’s nice that the rootkit option is now included. Finally, new options are that the scans can be run as the administrator and there is the option to create a desktop shortcut for quick access to any of the 10 different antivirus scans.
The real time shield or guard is really impressive. The guard is really aggressive at scanning all files on the system that are in use. Full system scanning has also improved significantly. I was able to scan both hard drive partitions about 100 gigabytes of data in less than 1 hour or 57 minutes to be exact. The scanner uses about 80 to 90 megabytes and about 13 percent CPU power during a scan. The scanner detected an impressive 16 virus traces on the test computer. However, some of the detected items were false positives. PChelpware a common VNC support tool was considered a virus and Avira detected a test keygen as a virus (they’re always detected as malware). However, these detections are really impressive given the speed of scanning. Finally, the idle program uses approximately 24 megabytes of RAM across three services.
AntiVir Personal Version 10 offers free updating however the speed wasn’t exactly something to get excited about. On a 20 megabit connection I downloaded definitions at about 50 kilobytes per second. Thankfully, the update was only 8 megabytes in size which is significantly less than competitors like PC tools who may have 100 megabyte mandatory updates after installation. Avira allows the user to configure the update frequency. I tried to adjust it to lower than every day but a dialog box popped up and stated that every day is the least that it can be set as. This is similar to free AVG and really leaves a computer vulnerable to the hundreds of viruses that are released daily. Finally, AntiVir Personal Version 10 offers autorun.inf or usb disk protection. The free antivirus found two autorun.inf traces and neutralized them immediately.
