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Free Antivirus Software
Side-by-Side Comparison
Monday, August 24, 2009, 05:30 PM PDT
Printing Tip: To print to a standard U.S. letter size, compare only two products. About the Test Center |
AntiVir Personal
  |
Avast Antivirus Home Edition
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8.5 Free
  |
Security Essentials Beta
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Antivirus Free Edition
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Internet Security
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Full Specs
Full Specs
Full Specs
Full Specs
Full Specs
Full Specs
Full Specs
| Performance | Superior | Superior | Very Good | Very Good | Fair | Fair |
| Detection of WildList viruses | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 98% |
| Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: backdoors | 99% | 98% | 98% | 98% | 65% | 87% |
| Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: bots | 96% | 96% | 96% | 97% | 49% | 71% |
| Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: Trojan horses | 99% | 99% | 95% | 98% | 46% | 46% |
| Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: worms | 100% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 83% | 78% |
| Heuristic detection with two-week-old signatures | 53% | 46% | 47% | 52% | 33% | 41% |
| Heuristic detection with four-week-old signatures | 45% | 41% | 41% | 44% | 37% | 39% |
| Spyware detection: password stealer | 100% | 98% | 97% | 97% | 62% | 89% |
| Spyware detection: banking-info stealer | 99% | 97% | 89% | 91% | 28% | 73% |
| Adware detection | 92% | 92% | 94% | 93% | 39% | 67% |
| Successful cleanup of malware (removal of all active components) | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 90% | 90% |
| Rate of false positives | 0.01% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.01% | 0.12% |
| Scan speed (upon accessing a 741MB file; in seconds) | 28 | 38 | 50 | 77 | 38 | 63 |
| Design score | Good | Good | Good | Very Good | Good | Good |
| Phone support | None | None | $50 per incident, toll-free number | None | None | None |
| Online support | Online forums | E-mail support, online forums | Online forums | Online forums | Online forums | Online forums |