any thoughts about Avira Free?

We Avira users are not impressed with tests from various sources (AV-Compatives/Virus Bulletin/ShadowServer) that we have the highest detection rate. No, we want to use some other AV that scores lower- or do we?

 

Absolutely, thats when I would use other on demand AV's as well. But for keeping the nasties off to begin with I would trust Avira the most.

 

Get off your pompous condescending attitude and read the posts with an open mind. The OP asked for a good free AV and Avira meets that criteria handsomely, like it or not. Talking about hijack, your biased reply which is anti Avira in every sense is more irrelevant here than anything else.

Time to go back to my peyote session..........

 

Yep, I would go to any lengths to take off the rabid anti Avira fanboyz off this thread.

 

I have to tend to agree with this at this point.
Happy with Avira free and Premium and now the suite which I'm testing for my son's laptop.
It's kinda funny, av's are about the only thing we use in life where there really is no right or wrong.
Computers are touchy. It's right on yours but wrong on mine.
Detection is important but worthless if running poorly on one's system.
Have had licenses for many over the years, some good, some bad but this 8.1 version of Avira is the best running av I've had since I use to run a k version several yrs. back.
Good detection, smooth, fast and very light.
That's why I run Avira now.

Cheers to all!

 

I tought I would give it another chance but for some reason it will not install right or it gives blue screens. On another pc it did install like it should, but its not my favorite anymore. Unistaller didnt work too and the registry cleaner damaged a Eset trial version.

 

You uninstalled NOD32 prior to installing Avira Free right? Or at least disabled the real time protection? Just wanted to double check.

 

I installed NOD after I uninstalled Antivir. I dont know why it does install on one pc (all XP) and not on the other. I never had installing problems with AVG when helping a neighbour or friend. Hope they can fix it.

 

I removed Avira and installed Rising and then went back to Avira couple of times on two PCs, no issues at all, Avira cleanly uninstalled itself over and over again.

 

Nice to keep in mind we are talking about collections of "ones" and "zeros"
here,not our Religion,Family or Country.
Avira is great,I have never had a problem with the updater not working.
The server thing on the last big update was a nightmare,and even now,its tricky.
An example is I have mine set to notify me by email when updates are ready,
Since 12:58 am Central time there have been six updates.
they are IVDF 7.00.05.107 through IVDF 7.00.05.113.(there is no IVDF 7.00.05.108.)
My last set update was for 6:00am,so the last three were not downloaded.
I started the update,and IVDF 7.00.05.111 and IVDF 7.00.05.112 were instaled.
IVDF 7.00.05.113 droped off the face of the earth.
in the GUI it showed last update as IVDF 7.00.05.112,and the updater said your protection is up to date.
This with the e-mail showing I am one update behind right in front of my face!
I downloaded the fusebundle and manully instaled it.

Telling me Avira is good is preaching to the choir.
But it is damn sure not perfect,and the update issue is the real problem.

 

Wow, what a hot topic.

I've been with Avira free for a few weeks now. My system works fine, even works normally during a scan.

I have no issues with Avira (other than the advert during update).

Avira offers for me everything but an email scan and TBH if the email is from a stranger it gets junked by SpamAssasin, coupled with Ewido for online spyware scanning and Comodo Firewall, I have a very secure system. All 3 products work together. And cost nothing.

Of course I could go back to KIS2009, have an unusable PC during Scan, conflicts between SpamAssasin and KIS antispam module; have emails that take an age to download..

 

Well said!

I have trust in Avira's product and they are doing a great job.
No antivirus product is perfect but Avira is, quite simply, quality.
IMHO, products from ESET too.

However lately Kaspersky have rushed a feebly tested and poorly finished product to market. A product that causes BSOD's / browsing slowdowns and questionable real-time detection.

So let's give credit where it's due. Avira Keep up the great work.

 

Is this the first time that you have had problems with the updater? I'm just wondering if this would be considered a real chronic problem.

 

Sometimes I know I write about as clear as mud.
Just to be clear,unlike the other member that was having trouble with program updater modual itself,I am only talking about updates via server.

No,most of the time they come through. I am on not much better than dialup speed DSL,and when a download fails it is not my first instinct to blame the server.
A good idea would be check the Avira forum from say June24th to July 4th.
At no time was it impossible to download the update (fuzebundle in Avira-speak) from their site and do a manual update.

The weekends are pretty empty of updates between late Friday and late Sunday USA time.

In a way maybe Avira has me spoiled. I can remember when I used Avast I thought it was really great that it updated once per day!

 

The update servers are a problem. The number of users is growing faster than we can put up new download servers.
Every time we release a bigger set of files (ANTIVIR1.VDF, program update), the servers are at extremely high load for a couple of days.
In the light of this, there are several ideas in progress to fix the problem. Getting more servers, different type of servers, change compression method for the updater, change VDF file format and update mechanism, split up engine into more (smaller) modules and so on.

Hats off to the guys who made the KAV updater. That's one complex beast!

 

so far avira is working fine.
But i am curious- why doesn't Avast free have a resident shield scanner like AVG? where either you can set it to scan daily or weekly?

I thought awhile ago it did or am i wrong?

robin

 

Avast Home Edition does have a resident shield (a.k.a on-access scanner), of course.

What it doesn't have is the scan scheduler (ie. you can't tell it to perform an on-demand scan at say 2am) -- this is a limitation of the free version (the paid-for version has this feature though).

Hope this helps,
Vlk

 

Both avast and AVG have an "resident shield" = real-time scanning of files.

Avast Free doesn't have scheduled scans. That is a feature of the Pro version only.

 

does Avast do a daily scan? or do you have to do it manually?. AVG free 7.5 used to do a daily scan and gave you an option to just change the time. When i installed Avast i did not see that anywhere, so i uninstalled it

robin

 

Nope,Manually or with a screensaver thing. There is a way with the Windows schedualed task function,but its too advanced for me.

 

hmm
after comparing the two, avast to avira- if i had to pick which one I would pick avira because it schedules scans, is much easier to configure, seems to use less memory, so far on my test machine it is not having any problems updating and for a basic virus protection it looks pretty good.

AVG 8.0 of course i like the best but if i find a computer that cannot run it, then i will so far put AVira on it instead.

My antispyware program recommend is superantispyware pro so the client is both protected by an antivirus and antispyware protection. Even with AVG 8.0 free working fine i still recommend superantispyware pro.

robin

 

Well, nothing is perfect. Not even Avira.

 

It is good to see that not everyone sees on demand AV scans as passe.
With Avira you can set up as many as you want.
A root kit scan daily and a full scan once a week or any combo you can dream up.
Of course if you are in the "prevention only" camp,you can opt out of scans all-togather.

I use a firewall with HIPS,Sandboxie (when I remember),Firefox 3 with no-script,and Avira's pro-active is very good,
but I still like to see that "no detection" at the end of a full system scan.

 

Huh? You mean I went all this time thinking Avira IS perfect?? I'm gonna need some proof. (I never had problems with the updater...EVER) -- I installed this on all of my friends computers and they never had any problems either. This is about the only AV that I can truly recommend. The fact that they have a free version is almost crazy because it is so damn good.

Avira users - be thankful...very thankful -- this is one product that truly is amazing

 

I'll second that!