Avira Antivir PersonalEdition Classic is one of the few free (for personal use ) and competitive antivirus solutions out on the market. Sometimes I came across the hasty public opinion that a free product can't be too good, otherwise it would cost money. Well, when it comes to Avira Antivir PersonalEdition Classic I beg to differ. Although it's not a very complex security suite, it performs very well when it comes to virus detection.

The program itself is quite simple compared to others of its kind in terms of features and options. Despite its simplicity, the virus detection scanner and the virus definitions database work like a charm. After testing the program using the EICAR (European Expert Group for IT Security) test files, I noticed that Avira Antivir PersonalEdition Classic has passed the test regarding files downloaded using both HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Some of the malicious files have been detected by its on-access scanner, 'AntiVir Guard', while others were detected after a regular system scan.

Like I said before, this antivirus program has only two components: the regular and on-access scanner, which are extremely easy to configure. The program will protect you against extended threat categories: malicious applications, backdoors, dialers, games, jokes, phishing, privacy threats and unusual runtime compression tools. The resident on-access scanner and the scanning process go easy on your system resources. All events can be logged and sent via email, if necessary; scans of the entire system or custom drives can be scheduled.

The program is free for personal use; however, you need to register for free after a 30 day period in oder to receive updates.

Pluses: Explorer context menu integration, on-access scan, easy to install, configure and use. The program performs well when installed along other antivirus programs; however, it's not recommended to use more than one antivirus program at the time, as system instability may occur. The producers specified a compatibility issue with a product called 'Cygwin' and they also offered the solution to this compatibility problem.