Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic AntiVirus

By Ted Gallardo

Avira’s AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic

Reviewer’s Rating of AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic: 1½ out of 5

Overview:

Avira’s AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic antivirus is a Windows freeware application.

It is dedicated to monitoring and scanning your computer for malicious viruses.

If you are seeking out a freeware for home, personal use antivirus application, you may want to consider using AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic.

Pros of AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic:

The program has a straightforward easy-to-use and navigate tabbed interface, easy enough for any level computer user. One of the few dedicated antivirus scanners available, as most antivirus programs seem to be bundled with other components these days. When not scanning for viruses, the application hardly uses any system resources. It has a nice reporting feature, so that when it detects a virus, it provides a link to additional information on the web about that virus. Advanced users may like the detailed reports that virus scans generate. Virus definitions are updated daily, when installing there is a daily virus scan option. The built-in help file is useful, with good information and pictures, too. Scanning a 15Gb hard disk drive took about 30 minutes, which is efficient.

Cons of AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic:

This application still needs a lot of work. A lot may be an understatement. After installing, an almost full screen pop-up advertisement appeared on my screen promoting the Avira Antispyware application. This is not a free antispyware product, thumbs down on that. It took over four minutes to run a virus definition update - even with a high-speed internet connection, it almost felt like the days of dial-up modems. When running a virus scan, the application called home to the developers' web page eight separate times. While CPU use cycles were low, RAM usage jumped up to around 50Mb while scanning for viruses. The application did detect a virus. Trouble is I knew that file was not infected with a virus, so it was a false positive reading. I selected the option to ignore additional detections of that particular file. Instead of ignoring this particular file, the application proceeded to warn me an additional twenty, yes twenty times during the virus scan about the same exact file. I went so far as to add that file to the exception list so that the application would ignore that file - no such luck. It still warned my about that file during the course while I continued testing it.

Comments:

One of the few dedicated antivirus scanners still around and available. Needs a significant amount of work, polish, and has a ways to go before I can endorse it without reservation.

• Read more about it here.

Price: Free for use at home, not for commercial or business use.

Related Cyberwalker Articles:

• Yep, it’s a virus.
• Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Security, Spam Spyware and Viruses

Similar Applications:

• AVG Anti-Virus (Free Edition)
• CA Anti-Virus 2007

Additional Resources:

• ICSA Labs Antivirus Certifications
• AV-Comparatives
• West Coast Labs
• Checkvir

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