Avira (free) vs. Microsoft Security Essentials

[kazaam]

Anyone have any preferences between these two? I need to get one for my new SSD and was wondering if Avira is still considered the best free software.

Thanks!

[alkemyst]

I don't know if Avira was ever the best, but MSE is a no brainer...

[ability]

Never heard of microsoft security essentials, is it better than AVG free?

[Chiefcrowe]

I personally like MSE

[Lemon law]

I no longer have a dog in that fight. I never used or trusted MSE, I used to use the free version of AVIRA which I still maintain is the best free ware anti-virus. But recent years, Avira auto updates have proved very disappointing. I now use the free version of Avast, and I have tried AVG although its speed is very disappointing.

But still, IMHO, an antivirus is just one layer of a security system.

[ability]

Originally Posted by Lemon law

I no longer have a dog in that fight. I never used or trusted MSE, I used to use the free version of AVIRA which I still maintain is the best free ware anti-virus. But recent years, Avira auto updates have proved very disappointing. I now use the free version of Avast, and I have tried AVG although its speed is very disappointing.

But still, IMHO, an antivirus is just one layer of a security system.

I've never had any problems with AVG's speed. I set it to high priority and it only takes maybe 2 minutes. I have a great PC though. Not sure if this is considered "long" these days?

[lxskllr]

AVG is lackluster by about every measure excepting their stylish tray icon :^D

I use Avira on Windows, and same for my mother's machine. I don't trust MSE. I had performance issues with some of the earlier versions, and detection results are highly variable in recent times. Avira is always at the the top. Maybe not the best, but very competitive. It just works.

[MadScientist]

OP,
Read these test results and then decide for yourself.

http://www.av-test.org/fileadmin/pdf...11_english.pdf

http://www.av-comparatives.org/image...ummary2011.pdf

[xSauronx]

Originally Posted by MadScientist

OP,
Read these test results and then decide for yourself.

http://www.av-test.org/fileadmin/pdf...11_english.pdf

http://www.av-comparatives.org/image...ummary2011.pdf

interesting to see mcafee vse score so well; the health system i interned at use it and we all hated it because of the agent update issues.

[KirklandBrand]

Recently I've switched to Avira and I am very happy with it. I agree for novice/average user should stick to something like avast but for power user/adv user should be able to figure out the scheduling part of avira and scedule daily updates of the definitions and also schedule a scan over night.

I'd also say yes AV is just a single layer of defense.

[JEDIYoda]

I don`t use any sort of virus protection or even a firewall.....
Of course I use a MAC and we don`t have those problems.....heheheee

[blankslate]

Mac users just don't have people attacking their systems day in and day out.... Security by obscurity...

[KirklandBrand]

Originally Posted by blankslate

Mac users just don't have people attacking their systems day in and day out.... Security by obscurity...

It helps that it's based on BSD

[blankslate]

you'd think, but the 64-bit versions of Vista and 7 had a better implementation of security features like Address Space Layout Randomization than OSX had early on.

OS X later improved their game in that regard but MS got it right first.

[berryracer]

Avira AntiVir IS the best Free Antivirus. It has always caught viruses on systems that were running AVG Antivirus in my experience. And MSE is a big resource hog! Just watch how your system will become unusable while it's updating and it has a lot of False positives.

Avira Antivir has the best scanning engine as it uses the same engine as Kaspersky Antivirus!

Nothing compares to Avira Antivir when it comes to free antivirus.

MSE? Really ? by a company that just started fighting viruses a year or 2 back? no thank you ill stick to a product from people who know what they're doing.

[RedString]

Not to raise a slightly older thread but I thought I should add my two cents.

It's been a little while since I've really did much research on the current free AntiVirus software but I doubt they've all changed their gameplans and software in any radical way.

Just to clarify some misconceptions I'm seeing:

MSE is widely known for having the LEAST false positives. Indeed, it is Avira who has been shown to have the highest number of false positives. (though false positives isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just is very "suspicious" of activity.)
MSE also is not in any way a resource hog. It's also known to have a smaller footprint than others, aka Avira/Avast.

I can personally vouch for all these studies. I've used Avira for probably over 5 years before I heard about MSE coming around. I had been getting tired of false positives and the resource usage. I've switched to MSE and no more false positives, and after doing a little personal research - it indeed had a smaller footprint on my machine.

So actually, I would say it's the opposite of what I'm seeing in this thread. MSE has a small footprint, and it has the least number of false positives.

Though like I've said, it has been a good 6 months or more since I've did all these research into a new AV. But when I had, many credible websites and research groups all said MSE had least false positives. & They update very frequently, and I've had absolutely no issues with the software.

I don't think you can really go wrong with either Avira or MSE, they're both extremely good considering they're free.

creds: Finishing B.A. in Network Security.


edit: People using Mac. Good luck with that, you're slowly and surely getting on the hackers radar. Thank your rising popularity.

[zCypher]

I used Avira for years until I tried out MSE and haven't looked back. Don't get me wrong, I loved Avira. MSE is very light weight, and does not have any popups. I've also never had any glitches whatsoever with it.

I haven't had any malware infections in so many years... Then again, ever since I keep several backups of important stuff + run any risky things in a VM, I haven't been all too concerned about malware anyway.

[kazaam]

Any updates? Has MSE gotten any better?

[Paperlantern]

I use it on my primary home PC running Windows 7 Professional. Been using it for about 6 months, never had a problem with it resource wise. Havent had any notifications of virus/malware either. Course Im a pretty careful user being in the Security field myself and previously I never used an A/V suite simply because I just don't get viruses. But for what its worth, I do like MSE however and will put it on most machines I work on for side jobs as well.

[Oakenfold]

Originally Posted by kazaam

Any updates? Has MSE gotten any better?

I have also been using MSE for several months now, no complaints here. Of course no A/V is 100%, I think it just shifts between Avira, AVG and now MSE as far as detection rates go and use a confirmation of a second scan (i.e., housecall) if I pick something up.

[nemesismk2]

Originally Posted by kazaam

Any updates? Has MSE gotten any better?

I would like to know this too because recently it was updated but can't find any info on what was changed or made better?

[mikeymikec]

Originally Posted by ability

Never heard of microsoft security essentials, is it better than AVG free?

<me lifts the rock you've been living under and hands you a pair of sunglasses and a razor>

I've never used Avira. I've used or have come in contact with most of the other free (and non-free) security solutions available for Windows.

I used AVG Free for a number of years but stopped at v8 as on my Athlon XP setup at the time system performance went right down the plug hole. I've seen it in action on a number of systems since and their performance doesn't suggest that AVG has improved much in this respect.

I went on to Avast free (big improvement over AVG Free). I stopped using Avast when it started advertising "Win a Macbook Air!" and tried to serve up the trial version of AIS every time a big update came along. I've used MSE since.

Someone mentioned false positives. I haven't seen MSE come up with any on any system that I've used including my own, nor does it seem like a resource hog (well, anything over Microsoft Update being a bit of a resource hog on say XP).

I've seen every security product I've encountered miss a threat or get disabled by malware, including MSE.

Kaspersky would interest me more as it seems to pick up the more obscure stuff (at least, its standalone detector apps do), but Kaspersky seems to make systems perform half as well as I would expect their hardware spec to.