back to article Free anti-virus scanner hits the cloud

Avira has added cloud technology to the latest version of its popular freebie anti-virus scanner. Version 10 of Avira AntiVir, released on Tuesday, adds cloud-based detection to a free-of-charge security scanner that competes with similar products offered by (Czech-firm ALWIL's) Avast and AVG. All three firms aim to move …

COMMENTS

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  1. NightFox
    Thumb Down

    Pah - no need

    Dont need it - I've got Vista Internet Security which I got for free and it's much better at finding infections than any of the others...

    (Yes, I am joking)

  2. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    I don't get it...

    I don't get it... "clouds" are a bunch of VMs on boxes, they aren't magic. If they are having trouble sending definitions to users, then how does a cloud help? If they are sending people's files *to* a cloud to check them, surely that's far more traffic than sending out the updates (plus there's the troubling privacy issues of this technique). And, the cloud would need to have up-to-date definitions for it's scans to do any good either so it doesn't remove the burden of producing updates. Is it just using a "cloud" to distribute updates? That's a pretty round-about way to say you are using a content distribution network, bleh. Or is it to scan files *in* a cloud (i.e. in reality scan files inside VM images?)

  3. JB
    Thumb Up

    Happy camper

    I'm pretty happy with Antivir. Switched from AVG last summer - was getting sick of having to wait about 5 minutes for AVGRSX.EXE to stop grinding my hard disk to pieces at startup.

    I'm a bit behind the times, though - does the cloud-based detection free up system resources?

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    free scans

    I know I only use freebie scanners nowadays. No local impact when I don't want it, and up-to-date scan engine are the advantages for me.

  5. error32
    FAIL

    So this scans for anti-virusses?

    Shouldn't this be called either anti-virus software or virus scanner.

  6. Graham Jordan

    Avast

    I've been using Avast for years now as a freebie and feel guilty as hell.

    Version 5 is pretty slick. It's cleaned up and Chinese chick replacing the robotic man advising I've been updated is a turn on. Well, actually its not, I lied.

    Maybe I should pay for it. hmmmm

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Panda

    I've put Panda Cloud on some pc's for about a year now, most seem pretty happy with it.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Symantec

    Ha, that reminds me, Symantec are trying to sell my company NetBackup at the moment. As part of the bribing process I was offered their Anti Virus solution for home use. I politely told them it was a piece of shit and it'd only get used as a door stop. And by politely I mean I said it in them exact words.

    I never did get my copy. Gutted

  9. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    I don't get it

    I don't get it either.

    What does a cloud-based virus scanner do, other than not work if you've got no internerd and someone plugs in an infested USB stick (which is of course still the favourite recipe for Conficker and days of downtime).

  10. Ross Nixon
    Thumb Up

    Panda was first

    So, these companies have seen the light & are playing catch-up to the excellent free Panda Cloud Antivirus.

  11. mrobaer

    Why not?

    In the recent article about the Energizer website pimping malware you guys (The Reg) had mentioned Immunet, which seems to incorporate could technology. I'm wondering why it wasn't mentioned here?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    it's not just about system resources, but action taken

    panda cloud anti-virus is nice in the sense that it takes virtually no resources away from my machine.. unfortunately, it's not keen enough to catch the majority of network worms. I'll give avast a whirl, hopefully it will gain the title of "First cloud AV to get the job done"

    ciao mates

    -xenu

  13. mhenriday

    A good independent source for

    distinguishing the wheat from the chaff with regard to anti-virus programmes is the Shadow Server Foundation (http://preview.tinyurl.com/yetkdb4 ) - scroll down the left-hand panel to the virus stats. Which provider leads the pack in percentage of Day0 attacks detected varies from day to day, but over the longer term, Avira has consistently been a winner. The pop-ups which try to convince users to subscribe to the paid-for version are rather intrusive, but can be disabled by following the instructions in this WikiHow article (http://preview.tinyurl.com/5j6jna )....

    Henri

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