18 March 2008, 12:28

Avira prepares for version increment

Avira has upgraded the bandwidth of its update and download servers by 25 per cent to four Gbit/s, in preparation for the release of version 8 of its anti-virus product in around two weeks time. Beta testing for Antivir 8 is currently in progress, but should be complete by 4th April. Avira has announced that the new version will be released in the first week of April.

The company reports that the development team has completely rewritten the anti-virus engine. Although Antivir has regularly emerged as one of the nippiest products in heise's c’t anti-virus software tests, its scanning speed has apparently been increased by a further 10 to 15 percent. The developers also claim to have reduced memory use and increased overall performance. The firewall, MailGuard and WebGuard have also apparently been improved in version 8 of the Internet Security Suite, although no details have yet been released.

The increase in server bandwidth prior to release of the new version should, with luck, help avoid a repeat of the problems seen when version 7 was released around two years ago. The servers for Antivir Personal Classic, the free version for home users, were hopelessly overloaded for several weeks. According to Avira, the free version now has around 50 million users worldwide.