PCMag Review of Avira Premium Security Suite 8

If anyone is interest below is the link to PCMag's review of APSS 8.


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2287659,00.asp

 

wow that's one bad review.
Luckily I don't believe these reviews

 

Well, the Antivirus and AntiSpyware received pretty good reviews. Firewall and anti-spam as in my personal tests are not so powerful compard to others.

Regarding the Guard problems they'll be fixed in couple of months in a big update Avira will have together with some other bugs.

Talking about Registry and other secondary files left by malwares and especially spywares I also would like them to have the option to better clean them.

Overall it seemed a decent review.

 

Ahh, excuse me, but no one. I repeat no one. Changes their security as much as I do. LOL. I have been sticking with Mamutu and Avira Premium 8.0 though, and I have to say Avira is grrrreat! Love the GUI and the protection, but most of all I love the free 6 month license I got from their website a few weeks ago. LOL.

 

Oh good, another computer mag review I care nothing about.

 

The problem with security suites is that they tend to be viewed based on their weakest link. In Avira's Security Suite, a superb antivirus program is coupled with a feeble firewall. In my opinion, PCMag's conclusion is correct -- the Avira suite is absolutely NOT a good choice.

A side note: The paper used in PCMag is much too slippery for its most appropriate use.

 

Which is not really the right way to do it.

It looks like Avira is following ESET's idea, and rightly so. A fig for Matousec and his tests and all the silly FUD he introduced. Any reviewer that claims that the firewall is "vulnerable to malware attack" when it's paired with THE most fearsome single-engine scanner in the industry really needs to get his head out of his... erm... damn I wish I had your wit here bellgamin.

LMAO.

 

PC Magazine (and especially the author of the articles - Neil J. Rubenking) have their own favourites . They have always loved Norton (perhaps Symantec is their special sponsor) and recently started to love Panda , too .
According to them , nothing can be comparated to Panda and Symantec , we all know it is not really true.

 

I have had email correspondence with Mr. Rubenking, and I can tell you his mind is made up- he likes Symantec a lot. In addition, they are also one of the biggest advertisers with PC Magazine. So here we have one of the world's best AV engines getting overall low marks because of other things he does not like about the suite. You won't get infected if the engine is outstanding (it is), therefore, the rest is not that relevant (at least for me).

If you read computer magazine reviews and expect to find objective analysis, you came to the wrong place. It's called follow the money.

 

If true , this explains pretty much everything

 

If I remember correctly PCMag shot down eset as well some time ago.seems to be Bias reviews.

 

Correct. 3 circles/dots or whatever it is, out of 5. Norton products 4 1/2....well well well


Cheers

 

Well, as I wanted to test Avira 8 by myself I ran the latest Storm worm variant, and a codec trojan.

Then I installed Avira 8 Premium, updated and configured it properly and immediately Guard prompted me about the storm worm being active and running from C:\Windows\kavir.exe.

During this time everytime I tried accesing a webpage I was receiving a prompt: "Your computer is infected. Please download antispyware, etc" and I was redirected to other webpages with adult content also.

I disabled the guard and performed a full Avira scan. It succesfully detected the storm worm resident in the memory, killed the process and deleted the file (without restart) and then it detected the trojan also and deleted it.
When it finished everything was back to normal. No storm worm (kavir.exe process) in the memory, and all the webpages loaded in Internet Explorer were running nice without redirects and pop-up windows.

Then I ran Super AntiSpyware that deleted some registry keys left by the trojans and also IE defender.

What Avira couldn't identify and delete was the latest IE Defender variant.
As for me I am fully satisfied with this result and it seems very strong in cleaning an infected computer.

 

Well there we go, rightly so avira deserves more then 2.5 colored red circles.

 

Wow, you tested with one virus and you're satisfied.

Wow, failing to clean the system means it's very strong at cleaning and you're happy with it.

I have nothing against Avira, but at least PCMag tried to be fair.

 

IE Defender is not a virus if you don't know, it's just a rogue app and it's not necesarily an Antivirus job to clean it.

The virus and the trojans were succesfully cleaned. I'll test with some more viruses in the future if I'll have time, now it was just a proof of concept.

In real life I used to clean infected PCs with up to 2-3 viruses and 1-2 backdoors with the same result.

I didn't pretend to be reliable as PCMag of course, and anyway in real life the chance to catch more then 1-2 viruses and 2-3 spywares is very little.

 

Why not check it up yourself and see what it's supposed to detect?
http://www.avira.com/en/products/avira_premium_security_suite.html

It even left a bunch of registry entries behind, as you proved for yourself. I think the review was pretty spot-on. Good detection, poor cleanup and firewall. I wonder why so many people are so unhappy about it.

 

Usually antivirus software don't clean registry entries. With them left over your PC works very good as well. The .exe and .dll files are important to be deleted.
Of course registry entries are good to be removed also but not compulsory in all the cases.

I've seen many happy people that are using Avira. I myself recommended it to dozens and installed it personally on their PC and they are fully satisfied.

 

I never tried it but I don't think I could live with the program from PcMag's review & your review as well, sounds like something to stay away from...thanks for the warning...

 

That may be true, but how does that mean Avira is good at cleaning? Do you call an antivirus that leaves, say, your firewall disabled and windows explorer unable to see hidden files after it removes a virus "good" at cleaning? Besides, you need to try with more malware. Some that actually pose a challenge, instead of those that can be killed simply by terminating the process and deleting the files.

In any case I was just puzzled at how you arrived at your final conclusion. It couldn't remove traces of one malware and completely failed to uproot the other one at all, SuperAntiSpyware had to finish the job Avira left undone, and you finish off your review by saying that Avira is "strong" at cleaning infected computers.

I have nothing against Avira, and the reviews I've heard about it are generally good. I'm just referring to th PCMag review, and people's responses to it here.

 

Lets see, PC Mag has how many subscribers and Avira has how many users. Thought so. Case closed. Avira Rocks on.

 

/thread

 

Amen

 

I'll chime in by saying that PCMag's review is askew. I'm running APSS 8 my XP Pro SP3 box, and am quite satisfied with the protection that it offers.