Lavasoft unveils Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix – the cousin of Ad-Aware

Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 12:00
Software
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Lavasoft has unveiled their new antivirus application. Lavasoft hopes that the new full fledged antivirus application will do as well as its previous hit Ad-Aware. As its reviews, the new Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix is Lavasoft’s first full fledged antivirus application. But careful analysis shows that the application is nearly identical to one that already exists: Avira AntiVir.

The similarity between Avira AntiVir and Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix is highlighted by the fact that Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix shares Avira AntiVir’s interface, down to malware blockers, on-the-fly detection, a scanner, malware removal, and protection from e-mail viruses and Web threats. An important features of Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix is that it offers, in addition to full system scanning, an option to pick from preset scans or create a profile to scan a smaller portion of the PC, like just one of the drives.

Just like Avira AntiVir, Lavasoft’s new antivirus application works really well and doesn’t budge until the identified threat is deleted or quarantined. Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix lets the user do a variety of things with the data. The user can print, save, and send reports. It sometimes uses an internal browser to look for information available online about discovered threats. With the help of the expert mode in the configuration menu, the user can turn on root kit scanning and scan outgoing e-mail messages.

But there are a few negatives as well. Compared to other applications in the Lavasoft’s family, Anti-Virus Helix is much less user-friendly when it comes to visual appeal, organization, and navigation. The user has to manually discover and add STMP e-mail and specific MIME details. This is the applications biggest problems. The presence of text lines instead of icons in the menu can also be added to the list. Anti-Virus Helix takes more effort to schedule as compared to Ad-Aware. These concerns can be classified as small ones for intermediate and advanced users who don’t mind referring to help files when the tool tips are not enough in terms of clarity and explanations. Ultimately, what matters the most is the protection from potential virus threats.