Avira AntiVir Personal 9.0 review

AntiVir Personal 9.0 is free anti-virus software for Windows 2000and higher with a slick interface and integrated protection against spyware, phishing and rootkits.

Unfortunately, AntiVir had major problems with its update server. During testing, we usually had to download virus signature library updates manually from Avira's website because the server wasn't responding. The website itself was also slow or failed to respond at times.

The interface is excellent. The main window displays the status of AntiVir Guard, a resident anti-virus engine that constantly monitors your system, along with the dates of your last scan and update. You can start a scan from here. Below this Status display in the main Overview tab are the Events and Reports tabs, which provide a simple interface to view and export the program's log files. Down the right-hand menu bar, you'll find the Local Protection tab, with its Scanner and Guard sub-menus. Here you can scan specific files or directories and get details about recently detected threats.

An Administration tab provides access to quarantined files and the scan scheduler. There's also a more advanced Configuration menu behind a text link here, which allows you to alter the behaviour of the scanner and guard by instructing them to scan archive files or to scan files only with specific extensions.

This free version of AntiVir doesn't have any browser or drive-by download protection, which didn't help its performance in our web threat exposure tests. Although it detected and either entirely eliminated or neutralised 15 out of 20 threats once they made it on to our PC, it was compromised in the remaining quarter of the test. It lacks an integrated email scanner, but every file moved to your PC will be scanned anyway, including email attachments.

Its poor protection against web threats - the most common form of malware - counted against Avira's product. Because a high proportion of files were compromised in our tests and its update engine couldn't be relied upon, AntiVir Personal 9.0 couldn't match its free rivals, such as Microsoft's Security Essentials and AVG Free.

See page 2 for benchmark results.