Solo Technology

A few days ago, I posted an article that included a link to PCWorld.com’s recent Antivirus review. Antivir was the top ranked free option, so I thought I’d give them a shot and see how it works. My home machine is still evaulating Microsoft’s OneCare beta (so far, all is well) so I decided to use a machine nearby that the wife and kids use when they’re in the office. Of course, I removed the existing av product and rebooted before starting.

The install of Antivir went smoothly enough. And as expected, I had to reboot when completed. And, at first glance, all seems fine but it won’t update. Just times out after a very long time. I’ve been trying for 3 hours now. That’s not great news as the provided signature files are from January 18th. And, as the cherry on top, while watching the updater time out, every few minutes I get a huge advertisement billboard popping up encouraging me to buy the full product. Gee, no offense fellas, but I think I’ll pass on that right now.

I headed off to the support forums (thankfully, they have an english section!) to find that I was not alone with my issues. Seems a lot of people can’t update. And in fact, it was then that I realized that this isn’t the same version that PCWorld.com reviewed. I have version 7. They did version 6.something. Perhaps this version is overly new and maybe not quite ready for release to the real world? Not sure, but I read enough in the forums that I’m rather nervous about uninstalling it as apparently that’s not gone well for some folks. *gulp*

Long story short, I’m going to suck it up and try and get this product uninstalled. I think I’ll put Avast on it instead and wait for Antivir v7 to “mature” a bit before I try again.

The moral? Check support forums before installing.

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