Although not as reliable as a paid one, a free antivirus is always a good solution for users with a low budget.
With the free antivirus market in continuous growth Avira is trying to establish its place on the market with their own free product. Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic is the free version of the paid product Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium.

Although it's a free antivirus AntiVir is capable of scanning 30 different compressed and archive types detecting high risk Trojans and viruses. After detection you can determine whether the program should repair infected files, delete them, or delete only if repair fails.
AntiVir's full system scanner generates a report that includes details about the system, program versions, settings, and scanned files. The report appears designed for submission to tech support, which is available through AntiVir's online forums.
The user interface offers a good design and it is very friendly and intuitive.

AntiVir's Guard module (the on-access scanner) puts its protection out in the open if you double-click the tray icon it will display its current settings, current status, and the name of the most recently scanned file
The full scan is quick and with a low memory cost considering AntiVir is installing four running processes on the computer.
The update system is very well constructed and the program updates its database daily which ensures reliable protections against new threats.

AntiVir doesn't specifically scan incoming or outgoing e-mail messages or attachments and doesn't detect adware and spyware but if you are looking for a standalone antivirus scanner that can also offer spyware or adware protection, you'll have to shell out a few dollars to get it.

Offering a very good protection against viruses Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic is a good solution for home users and although it doesn't offer full features, it has the ability to exclude up to a dozen processes from on-access scanning so it can coexist with, for example, a spyware scanner.

You can download free Avira Antivir Personal Edition Classic here.

written by Cristian M.