Avira Free Antivirus 9.0 Review Discussion

By Charles P. Jefferies

Avira AntiVir Personal is a free security suite for home users. It promises basic protection from viruses and spyware. How does it rank against other antivirus solutions? Read our review to find out.

Read the full content of this Article: Avira Free Antivirus 9.0 Review

Related Articles:

• AVG 9.0 Anti-Virus Free Review
• Microsoft Security Essentials Review
• Symantec Norton Antivirus 2010 Review

 

Productivity got a serious hit there.

I agree that the pop-up is annoying, but I must say, I really like Avira, it keeps me protected and does little to my old laptop performance-wise.

Thanks for the great review Chaz!

 

Weird, the paid version seems so different. I remember it catching all 4 virus's before I even clicked "download" (as well as most others I've had). I like the interface too, I thought it was very intuitive, though maybe that's because I've been using it for a year. Chaz, you were spot on about the resource usage though. It's like it's not even there. As for updates, it's normally around 20 Kb for me if I manually update. So most of the time I don't even notice.

 

Good review, Chaz.

While I do like the comparison to AVG throughout, I think you should mention MSE as a worthy competitor too.

 

We will have a free antivirus guide coming shortly that compares many different free AVs.

 

I'd like to make a few remarks ( slow day on the actual notebook front , eh ? ) :

Moved from AVG to Avira some months ago .

Only one "popup" ad for the pay version and only when updating . A small "price" to pay for a free antivirus imho .

Avira did have an issue with their update servers for a while , it was caused by a big update that "overwhelmed" only the free users servers , as the free version is becoming a favorite . Its is now solved and I have no problem updating .

Moved from AVG free due to it getting "heavier" and taxing my system more with each new version . I hope Avira free will stay lean and light on system resources .

-Gilo

 

If you are that concerned about system resource usage, I encourage you to try Microsoft Security Essentials. It is lighter than AVG and Avira in day-to-day usage.

 

But MSE is really safe?

Charles, now that you have tested the most popular, as far as security goes, which one is the best? As far as performance? About the footprint?
A quick intro to the upcoming guide please?

 

I usually use AVG or Avast! depending on which machine I have running. I'm actually waiting on a review for Avast! I hope that's on the list of free AV software NBR is looking through.

Was reading the MSE review and this made me laugh.

 

An avast! review will be coming shortly.

 

Was that with the MSMPENG process included?
(On installing MSE, Windows Defender gets automatically uninstalled, an improved version of WD is incorporated in MSE).
MSMPENG is the MSE proces for this part afaik.

Like mentioned by Gilo, the slow updates really seem to be a thing of the past, now that Avira has improved their updates 'distribution'.
Props for the (free) AV reviews by the way.

 

If it is configured like that at default then yes; for every antivirus review I do, all values are left at default.

Good to hear that Avira's updates are back to normal.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

Avira FTW!

Case Closed/

 

http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm

 

The pop-up is easy enough to disable.

I've been using Avira ever since I got my laptop and I've had no problems with it.

 

I started using Avira after my Kaspersky expired. It's alright actually. The interface could use some work, but if you know what your doing it's decent at what it does and hey it's free!

The pop up ads are somewhat annoying but forgivable given that it's free and fairly easily disabled.

My updates have been working fine for the 3 weeks I've been using it. Almost zero impact on my somewhat underpowered 2510p too

 

I consider Avira the best free and paid antivirus in the market, I also think the interface is easy to use and navigate. I have used this antivirus for free for the Last 5years and it have maintained my computer virus free since..there was only once instance that I can recall that the one virus was really bad that it couldn't delete it but after performing a recovery every thing went back to normal.

One of the bes feature is that it let you control how fast or slow you want the system scan to be.

I also used the paid version for a year and liked to since it have a good firewall.

 

good review.
although i think the seeming intrusiveness of the pop up ads are a little exaggerated. in more than three years of using this product it has never bothered me. in fact i welcome it, as it is one of the few ways that avira gets to market its product.
also as pointed out by others, the annoyingly slow updates are now a thing of the past. it still updates a little slower than avg however.
the comments on the unwieldy interface and small footprint are spot on though. this is not an antivirus for a non-techie. but i think most tech savvy users like it for its small cpu hit.

 

Ever since I switched to Avira, I never looked back. The pop-up doesn't bug me and it's not hard to disable it altogether. The small footprint is what won me over and has made me install it on every computer I set up.

 

wow, thanks for the review....is it possible to have two or more anti virus softwares running concurrently in our PC/Laptop? if so, what other anti virus software be compatible with avira?

 

Avira is also my favorite antivirus, not only because of the small footprint but mainly because you barely know it's there when it is active.

Every other AV I tried makes every single file operation (like explore a folder or copy or move files) lag a bit. You know the AV is there scanning every file you walk across. But with Avira there is absolutely no delays in file operations. Things are as smooth as if there was no AV watching in the background.

Only con I find in it is that sometimes their update servers get overloaded and it takes forever to download the update files. Fortunately, this is nowadays less common than it was a couple of years ago.

Let's hope that they not bloat it in futures releases. It would be sad to see AntiVir take the Norton route, mainly because there are no alternatives as light, fast and unobtrusive as this superb antivirus app.

Damn, I sounded like an Avira PR in that last paragraph, but I am not. I swear.

 

Does anyone know how to disable the ad. I get it a few times a week. It wouldn't be all that annoying but it alt-tabs you away from games, which really suck with Fallout 3 as that game can't alt-tab for a darn.

 

Besides that, here is a way to save the trick for reusing in another Windows installation. Copy this, paste in a text file and save it with any name you want and the extension ".reg".

For Windows XP and Vista:

For Windows 7:

This is assuming that avnotify.exe is in C:\Program File\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\. Change accordingly if it is not there.

Now double click on the file and allow merging the script into the registry. The nag wil be gone if you did everything correctly.

 

Don't run two AVs at the same time because they can conflict with one another.

 

thanks for the quick reply. how about running avira with an antimalware app? what would be compatible with it? i have read about
malwarebytes' anti-malware. would it be ok to have it? or would avira be enough together with windows defender?

thanks in advance...

 

i just want to know how this compares to avast

 

Thanks for the great info.. this helped me save some time...

 

I've always liked Avira but I ended up switching to MSE instead. Even though i've read that updates issues were solved I still had update and connection issues which caused me to use Microsoft Security Essentials instead.

If you have no problems updating Avira, it's a really nice AV.

 

I've been using Avira for the past 5 years, or so, and have no complaints. Occasionally, the downloading/updating process doesn't work so well but there's an option to manually download and process the latest info.

I never understood the love that AVG gets from experienced users. I tried it, and found it to be a horrible, performance-robbing, large footprint mess.

 

i have initially installed avast av in my vista home premium laptop since when i acquired it last Nov 5 this year. then i have read about avira prior to this review(about 2 weeks ago) and installed it also. so i have these two free AV running together in my laptop. i have read and somebody advised me here that running two AV together may cause some conflicts in the machine. so far i have not experienced any conflict YET, hopefully not. i have also installed an app named Winpatrol which tells me if there is any changes in my registry or start up menu or what ever you call it(sorry i'm not that computer savvy). and i have also read in some forum(through yahoo search) that he is running avast and avira with no problems at all, that is why i have also given it a try. as i have said, so far, the combo plus winpatrol and windows defender and windows firewall work for me...