PCMAG Review:Avira AntiVir Premium Security Suite

Link:Review

 

Uh, realtime AntiSpyware? Excessive yammering? WTF?
Spam can be trained quite well and email coresspondents can be whitelisted easily in the anti spam gui (two clicks or something)....

Either the tester was pretty blind, didn't bother doing a thorough test, or wanted to bash the product.

 

Some of that is accurate.

 

Which parts? I've since read the review so I deleted previous post in which I asked about the yammering.

 

i think its a good review, as a suite, it just doesnt match up to what others have on offer.

2.5/5 sounds bad, that would be 5/10 which sounds worse, but the label fair is decent enough.

 

Not as bad as half a million out of a million! Informative test all the same.

 

i think the premium would either be given 3.5 or 4/5 though.

 

I don't understand the poor virus detection rating. I mean that is what an antivirus is for. Why even review these suites? I hate suites. Avira has the best detection and THAT is what is important. If you want to detect spyware get CounterSpy or something. If you want to detect Spam there are all sorts of software out there. Firewalls? What for? Most of us are behind routers and use something like PG to control what calls out. I have no need for a Security Suite. Bah.

 

They tested Premium.

 

but it was judged as a suite, as they tested the suite.

 

leaving aside whether the rating is fair or not......i am happy to see that the reviewer did look beyond the "detection-rates" to judge the suite...

And i have always believed that neil does a pretty fair job at reviewing security products...

 

thats what i meant if it wasnt clear

 

AntiVir does not have a dedicated real time AntiSpyware so how could it be yammering all the time? It does have a real time AV guard which includes Spyware signatures but that can be set to act completely quiet, so I don't get his point on that one.

And his point about AntiSpam being hard to train to exclude mail adresses is ridiculous too, I've checked. It's one right click and one left click in the AntiSpam overview (same goes for training as Spam or Ham). It is normal for such solutions to require a certain amount of training to get proper classification, look at thunderbirds antispam, it's just the same there.

So I have to repeat myself, I don't get the point of his argumentation on firewall and antispam since the issues he mentions do not exist IMHO. The only somewhat valid point I agree with is that it doesn't come with an option to preconfigure some system service rules for the firewall leading to some more popups due to program execution stack checks (running iexplore from explorer.exe requiring separate allowance from an iexplore that gets started by an arbitrary application like badmalware.exe, which in my eyes is a good thing).

Personally I wouldn't use preconfigured settings even if they were offered, but it might be nice for people that are less tech-savvy.

 

It was reviewed as a Suite, not an AV component.
Suites make sense for end-users who are looking for convenience or are non-PC savvy or both, and my guess is the "tree/forest" rule comes into play here, as it's fairly easy to dismiss a suite when you are a member at Wilders.
As for including a firewall, it helps when you have a laptop and/or travel.
That being said, I agree with you that a multi-vendor layered approach for Windows has its advantages.
It would seem that Avira turned down PC Magazine's advertising sales calls:
"Hey Neil, we don't want to jeopardize the Symantec contract (or insert advertiser), and since Avira doesn't pony up for ad space, feel free to beat 'em up a little in the review."

 

Having used the AV and the suite for quite awhile, a lot of what they say is true. Especially in its lack of ability to remove all remants of infections. I agree it is not well suied for a PC that is need of clean up but more for one to keep clean free. I read the review and agreed on all points.

 

They dont have an antispyware though...

 

it wasn't direct to you...

 

I'm with Mele -- suites are not sweet. When it comes to its antivirus, Avira is non pareil. For everything else in Avira's suite, there are better stand-alone choices.

As for PCMag: I used to subscribe but got tired of issues that mainly contained articles & advertisements about TVs, cell phones, stereos, cameras, etc.

 

Security suites are the trend, and imho make a lot of sense if their security components are relatively strong. The idea of a centralized mangement console is hard for me to fault (not to mention reducing the number of security icons in my tray from 3 or 4 to just 1)!

I tried Avira and didn't care for it, but from what I've heard and read, two suites that appear to qualify are KIS and ZASS - so I'll try those next.

 

there are many suites that qualify,

panda
norton
KIS
f-secure
avg
bitdefender

 

That may very well be - it's just that the two I mentioned have received excellent reviews and I've also heard good reports from friends who use them.

 

Yesterday, my computer caught something. Avira kept finding it and quarantining it. No matter what key I hit, it activated it and Avira quarantined it. So I ran a full scan and nothing. Downloaded Kaspersky and it found it and deleted it on a reboot. That kind of did it for me. Missing something is one thing, but detecting and not getting rid of it is another. So Eset 2.7 is back on.

 

Most AV's have problems removing stuff that's injected in running processes, and need to be run in safe mode to remove them. Kaspersky's "Advanced disinfection routine" is good and stops you from having to scan in safemode as it automatically deletes for you on the reboot. If Antivir detected it, then it likely could have removed it if you run a scan in safemode. It would be good to see Antivir implement this feature in the future, I know the free version of AVG does a similar delete and auto-reboot if necessary, not sure how many other AV's do.

 

the advanced disenfection technlogy is improved in 7.0 beta.
it can clean some rookits without a reboot
lodore

 

People, stop reading those "reviews".
I got a question for you guys: what's wrong with this?

Then you'll realize why all these "reviews" won't help anyone.