Antivirus Review Free 2012

The free antivirus category is a crowded one with well-entrenched products, but Avira distinguishes itself with a low-key approach, a clean and compact interface, and a wide variety of optional settings.

Pros

A professional-grade interface: Free programs and utilities often look kludgy and dated and have confusing or cryptic navigation. Avira, however, feels like software that you would ordinarily pay for. It almost looks like something built into the operating system, and you can navigate using either the left-hand pane or the drop-down menus along the top.

Lots of optional configuration: Avira works just fine out of the box, capable of running system scans without slowing down other tasks, like loading webpages or editing a document. But if you want, you can change settings like the number of days before Avira warns you that its definition file basically, a book of virus mug shots is out of date. You can also specify what types of compressed files you want to be scanned or ignored, ignore specific files or processes, target specific file extensions, and search for root kits before scanning. It s unusual to find this many options in a free antivirus app -- and you must have administrator privileges to change anything, so secondary accounts can t log in and tamper with it.

No hard sell: Unlike many free antivirus apps, Avira Antivirus Free is mostly content to run in the background and quietly do its thing. You ll get the occasional pop-up window, but it s not distracting. Cons

SafeSearch Plus has issues: Avira offers the SafeSearch Plus browser add-on during installation. It puts a button in your browser that you click to enter a Web search, and the results are sanitized by Avira to reduce the chance of you being led to a malicious page. It looks very much like Google and even plugs into Google Maps, but the add-on will pop up a window urging you to change how your New Tab page works -- every single time you open a new tab. It also doesn t appear to work in Firefox -- the change never takes effect, and you just keep getting the pop up every time you open a new tab. It works fine in Chrome, but in this browser it also redirects you to its own search engine instead of Google when you use Chrome s address bar to search for things, which is a bit further than we d like to go. Thankfully, you can skip installing SafeSearch Plus.

Not quite as good as a premium antivirus app: According to security software tests from AV-Test, one thing never changes: you get what you pay for. Avira Antivirus Free might be the all-around best antivirus app that you don t have to pay for, in terms of speed, quality of scanning, and usability, but paid programs from Kaspersky, Bitdefender, and McAfee consistently edge it out. You can get some of these for pretty cheap if you shop around. And there can be fringe benefits as well to paid software -- for example, your version of Norton is always the latest one as long as you have a subscription, and McAfee suites can now be used on an unlimited number of devices. Bottom Line

If you re tight on cash, Avira Free is a compelling option, as long as you skip SafeSearch Plus during installation. But a little extra insurance can go a long way, so we d prefer to stick to the big guns from the major vendors.

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What s Not Here This article reports only on free antivirus products that received at least a good rating in our reviews three stars or better.

Avira Free Antivirus

Illustration by I Love DustYou want security software that s as close to perfect as possible. After all, if just a single piece of malware slips through your defenses, it can wreak havoc on your PC. The question is, how close to perfect is free antivirus software.

According to our testing, some free antivirus programs do an admirable job of detecting, blocking, and removing malware, but others don t have what it takes to protect you.

For this roundup, we once again teamed up with AV-Test, a well-respected antivirus-software testing lab, to put nine free antivirus programs through their paces. Applying a rigorous battery of tests, AV-Test evaluated all of the packages to see how well each one can withstand both brand-new malware and older baddies, and how well each can clean up a malware mess. In addition, AV-Test performed a number of system-speed tests to determine how much each program will drag down a PC s performance. Finally, after installing the programs, we evaluated how easy each one is to use.

What Do You Get for Free.

Illustration by I Love DustMost free antivirus programs are pretty basic: You get the ability to scan your PC for malware when you want to, and most of the products will also continually monitor your PC for malware as they run in the background. But most of them don t include a firewall or extra features like parental controls. One exception: Comodo s free Internet Security Premium does bundle in a firewall.

The biggest drawback to going free: Your support options are generally limited. Most free programs offer a message board where users can discuss problems, but these boards don t provide professional support. You can find exceptions, however. Comodo, for example, includes a version of its GeekBuddy software, which lets you work with a Comodo technician to fix issues you encounter.

Which Package Is for You.

Illustration by I Love DustAVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2012 came out on top in our testing. It s fast, it blocks brand-new malware ef fectively, and it cleans up infected PCs efficiently. Avast Free Antivirus 7 and Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5 round out the top three.

If you re looking for something that can serve as a supplement to your current antivirus software, we review three possibilities; of those three, PC Tools Threatfire is a good option: It was the best all-around at stopping brand-new malware attacks in our testing. Threatfire relies solely on what s called behavioral analysis how programs behave on your PC to identify malware, whereas most traditional antivirus apps use either malware definition files or a combination of technologies to stop threats. Since Threatfire is primarily intended to stop malware before the invader causes a problem, you should be sure to install it on a clean PC.

Which free antivirus program is best. Click on the chart.Read how we rate antivirus software. Click on the links below to download your choice of packages, and click on the screens, including the chart thumbnail at right, to enlarge them. The chart shows how well the seven packages reviewed performed in our tests.

The reviews here appear in order of scoring.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

AVG Anti-Virus Free is the all-around winner in our survey of free antivirus products, having a perfect showing at disabling malware.Our top pick, AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2012, performed well in virtually all of the tests we ran.

In our real-world malware detection tests, which evaluate how well an antivirus package will block brand-new threats, AVG s freebie blocked 85.7 percent of the samples, tying for the best result among the programs we tested. It detected 98.7 percent of the more than 129,000 samples of malware from the past four months in our malware zoo test. That s a good score, although a bit short of the best results we ve seen.

AVG was at the top of its class in disabling active malware infections: On our test PC, it de tected and disabled all malicious software, and removed all traces of malware two-thirds of the time.

AVG also scans a PC relatively quickly. When we directed it to check 4.5GB of data, it sped through the job in 1 minute, 35 seconds, the third-fastest time in this test and only 4 seconds slower than the fastest. Its on-access scanner which runs when you open or save a file took 4 minutes, 55 seconds to go through the same amount of data, about average for the programs we looked at.

I like AVG s main interface, though its advanced settings could intimidate some users. Apart from that caveat, if you re looking for solid, fast PC protection, look no further than AVG.

Avast Free Antivirus

Avast s Free Antivirus 7 mostly excelled in protecting against malware.Avast s freebie finished second in this year s roundup. Avast Free Antivirus 7 mostly excelled in protecting against malware, it has a versatile interface, and it sped through our battery of malware tests.

Avast s defenses were weakest at blocking new real-world threats: It caught just 78.6 percent of them not outstanding, but slightly above average. Avast did far better at stopping well-known malware, detecting 99.1 percent of samples in our zoo test a very good showing. This package cleans up malware infections effectively, as well. It de tected all the malware residing on our test PC, and disarmed the invaders 93 percent of the time, tying for second-best in this test. The utility also removed all traces of infections two-thirds of the time.

The Avast offering won t slow your PC down much. It completed the on-demand scan test in 1 minute, 34 seconds, for second-best in the group; and it finished the on-access test in 4 minutes, 16 seconds, good enough for third-best.

Avast s interface has a lot going on advanced users will find many settings to toggle. Despite this complexity, it is nevertheless friendly enough that it shouldn t scare away less-geeky users.

Panda Cloud Antivirus

If you think setting up antivirus software should be as simple as possible, Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5 is for you.If you think setting up antivirus software should be as simple as possible, Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5 is for you. Panda stops malware well, and its extremely easy-to-use interface is great for those people who don t want to tweak all sorts of settings.

Panda blocked 85.7 percent of new malware, the same score as AVG. And the Panda freebie outperformed AVG in the malware zoo test by detecting 99.94 percent of the samples.

Panda did only a so-so job at cleaning up infections. It detected all active infections on our test system, and disabled 87 percent of them, about average on this test. It completely removed infections 60 percent of the time, also about average.

Panda s program was far from speedy in some tests. It slowed the copying of files over the network considerably, and its scan speeds were among the slowest we saw: It completed the on-demand test in 6 minutes, 10 seconds, and in the on-access scan test it took 7 minutes, 25 seconds.

If you value simplicity over speed, however, Panda Cloud Antivirus, given its success in detecting malware, makes a good choice.

Avira Free Antivirus

Avira Free Antivirus has an overview panel that, while better than in earlier versions, can still be overly technical.Avira Free Antivirus 2012 is fast and is unlikely to scare you with warnings about legitimate files, but it is also worse than average at detecting malware, and its interface is overly complicated.

Avira blocked 70.4 percent of the samples of new viruses in our real-world test, slightly worse than average for the tools we tested. It also lags in disinfection: Though it found all active malware infections on our test system, it disabled only 80 percent of them, another worse-than-average showing.

I m not a big fan of Avira s interface. Its overview panel is better than in previous versions, but the interface remains too technical in places. Also, I noticed that Avira occasionally displays ads.

Avira s results weren t all bad, however. It detected 99.7 percent of known malware samples in our zoo test, and it was one of only two free antivirus programs we tested that didn t mistakenly label legitimate files as possible malware. Its on-demand scan time of 1 minute, 31 seconds was the best in our testing, and its on-access scan time of 4 minutes, 54 seconds was respectable.

Using Avira will by no means leave your PC completely open to malware, but you should consider the higher-scoring AVG, Avast, or Panda first.

Next: Microsoft Security Essentials, and more, plus supplementary tools.

Apr 29, 2012  For this roundup, we once again teamed up with AV-Test, a well-respected antivirus-software testing lab, to put nine free antivirus programs through.

Excellent malware detection, a good interface and a strong set of extra features make Avira our editor s choice for free antivirus products.

The free antivirus category is a crowded one with well-entrenched products, but Avira distinguishes itself with a low-key approach, a clean and compact interface, and.