Avira AntiVir vs MSE?

my BitDefender Total Security 2010 license ends today and I'm looking for a free antivirus to replace my BitDefender

 

I use MSE with Windows Firewall. I find MSE to be light and unobtrusive and as of now it seems to be doing a good job. I also believe it does well in the AV tests.

 

well I'm not sure about what does unobtrusive means but indeed it's light
I just have a problem with that AV test, most people said the full scan takes a longer time than any other AV softwares in a significant rate

 

About mid last year, I made the move to MSE from avira. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, a virus managed to sneak into my system (I probably downloaded it myself, but still!) and MSE did not manage to pick it up. It was one of those nasties that shut down any antivirus you were running etc and didn't let you do anything, whilst advertising for you to buy their own antivirus.

Long story short, It took a bit of time and a lot of frustration (it wouldn't even let me load task manager), but I managed to fix it by running safe mode. MSE still did not detect it, but I grabbed malware bytes from another computer which eventually cleaned it. I then got rid of MSE and re-installed avira.

Avira is definitely great, and I reckon the best free one you could get, although my father recently got KIS 2011 for himself (kaspersky) and so gave a license to me. Once it runs out though, I'll definitely move back to avira.

I know MSE does really well in all tests etc. but you all know how powerful personal experience is...

 

MSE's full-scan will run a bit longer if it's done for the first time on your computer (a one-time thing).
Subsequent scans however are MUCH faster.

 

Microsoft Security Essentials is a wonderful option and I highly recommend it. (It is what I personally use on my system.)

It integrates nicely into the OS and Windows Updates, is low on system resources, and does an excellent job at detecting viruses and spyware.

 

QFT, +1, and et cetera...

 

I use Microsoft Security Essentials and I love it. Previously, I never used any A/V software because I felt it wasn't necessary if you knew what you were doing on the net'. However, with the introduction of MSE, a free, simple and very lightweight A/V program from MS, I changed my mind.

It integrates very well with W7 and Windows Updates, it's extremely light on resources and packs useful features such as real-time protection and folder/process scanning exclusion. What more could you want?

 

Another vote for MSE

 

I used Avira for a while, liked it a lot. But when I switched to Win 7, I started using MSE & it's worked out great ever since.

 

well I don't know if MSE has a lower detection rate of trojan but Avira found 2 trojans on my PC while MSE didn't in the first place (I tried both)
now I guess I'll stick to avira thanks anyway guys

 

I tried a few free antivir programs recently and I use to like Avira but the reason I stopped using it is because of its annoying pop ups ads that kept asking me to switch to their paid version... Seriously they pop up at least once a day and I got annoyed lol.

Now I mainly use MSE or Avast! for my PCs and they've been working well for me. For malware detection I just grab the free version of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and do the quick scan once in a while for protection.

 

The pop up can be disabled. Google "avira disable popup".

 

haha ok I don't know why I didn't look around when I was using Avira.

 

Avira and Avast both work very well. MSE works fine on most (not all) computers. It causes hard freezes on one of my systems running Windows 7 and I know of other users with the same issue. My other 6 computers are running MSE without a problem.

MSE is not effective at blocking self-installing (drive-by download) malware that masquerades as security software. What niharjhatn posted on page one is true in my experience. This happened several times with one system running MSE and switching to Avira stopped the problem.

 

I prefer MSE. It has a very slightly lower detection rate (2% in some cases, 5% in others from what I've read) but the interface is nice, it updates with windows, and it is very light (60MB in the background) so if I were to use an AV I'd definitely use MSE.

 

i used to have avira, then i switched to mse. this month i tried avast and im liking it so far...

 

Currently use Avira Premium since I have 2 licenses for it. It's OK but the Webguard had a serious bug for a while that messed up web surf constantly. Seems sorted out now. I was a Nod32 user before but switched since Avira seemed to offer better protection.

MSE I did test recently but took it off since automatic definition updates was flaky?

 

MSE is my vote

 

Used Avira for a very long time, when I got my new lappy I switched to MSE & couldn't be happier with the results. I also just use Windows built-in firewall.





*106

 

avira sucks. where ever i uninstall avira and install MSE or avast, they find tons of stuff to remove. some of that stuff is wellknown stuff that really should not be there anymore.

 

no they where not. the stuff they did on the system was documented and indeed, the system had these "missbehaviours". so they where nicely working viruses on those systems.

i've seen massively infected systems actually with avira on them. some that even disabled avira.