Avira Internet Security 2013

By Neil J. Rubenking

Anyone using the free or premium antivirus utilities from Avira knows exactly what the company's full security suite can do, because the suite's features are visible in all three products, just grayed when not available. Avira Internet Security 2013 ($89.99/year for three licenses) does everything you'd expect a suite to do, and also offers local backup of important files. It just doesn't do the job as well as the best of the competition.

The product's busy main window lists all features down the left side; clicking any of them fills the rest of the window with that feature's details. To keep users from drowning in a sea of details, the configuration window hides most of its options by default, revealing them only if you select "Expert mode."

Uneven Antivirus Protection

This suite offers the same antivirus protection found in Avira Antivirus Premium 2013, so please read that review for full details. I'll summarize here.

Getting protection installed on twelve malware-infested systems wasn't easy, because some of the malware samples fought back, but with help from Avira's bootable Rescue Environment and tech support I did it. The cleanup process wiped out essential Windows files on a couple of test systems, rendering them non-functional. Tech support identified the problem files and recommended replacing them from a Windows CD or from a system with the identical Windows version. I managed the task; the average user might have had difficulty.

In my hands-on malware removal test, Avira detected 79 percent of the threats and scored 6.2 points. That's a good bit better than the 5.7 points scored by Avira Antivirus Free 2013. Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 and Norton Internet Security (2013) outscored the rest in this test, with 6.6 points.

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