Antivirus Test 2011: Test Result for Five Popular Free Antivirus

Most people consider antivirus as a must have program on their computer, laptop and netbook. And even in our advanced technology today, people install antivirus on their smartphones too. Each person has her/his own choices and considerations when he/she chooses antivirus software. While the others probably still confuse to choose antivirus program.

The good news is various websites and magazines held various antivirus tests to see how these antivirus software work. Maybe you have read the test results on various resources. One of computer magazines, PC Media also held comparation test for several free antivirus programs. Unfortunately, the result wasn't posted on the Internet. So, I cannot give you an external link to prove what you will read on this article.

On this test, this computer magazine tested five free antivirus: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011, PCTools Antivirus Free, Avast! Free Antivirus 5, Avira Antivir Personal 10.0.0.609 and Comodo Antivirus 5.0.163652.1142. To make a long story short, it used several criterias that it thought could represent what users need from antivirus programs:

Criterias:

1. Protection:

The ability of the antivirus to recognize and prevent malware so the malicious programs not infect the system.

2. Cleaner

The ability of the antivirus programs to clean computer systems which already have infected by viruses. PC Media considered that this ability was something essential to have for antivirus programs.

3. Performance

The antivirus software performance including scan speed, the computer memory usage and how fast they detect and block the computer viruses.

The computer magazine released thousand dangerous computer viruses during the test. So, it could see the antivirus programs worked in real situation. Several viruses that it uses were VB-Shortcut, Serviks.vbs, and Sality among others.

The Result:

1. From Protection point:

Avast! (32 points)
AVG (31 points)
Avira ( 30 points)
Comodo Antivirus (29 points)
PCTools Antivirus (28 points)

2. From Cleaner point

PCTools Antivirus (41 points)
AVG (39 points)
Avira (24 points)
Avast! (23 points)
Comodo Antivirus (22 points)

3. From Performance point

AVG (9)
Avast (8)
PCTools Antivirus (7)
Avira (5)
Comodo Antivirus (4)

Overall result:

After the total points were accumulated, here the final result:

1. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (score =79)
2. PCTools Antivirus Free 2011 (score = 76)
3. Avast ! Free Antivirus 5 (score = 63)
4. Avira Antivir Personal 10 (score = 59)
5. Comodo Antivirus 5 (score= 55).