A-Squared Anti-Malware Free

All antivirus needs a sidekick to keep a PC truly safe. Although some users employ the use of internet security which bundle antivirus protection together with antispyware, antispam, firewall and even parental control, there are some users who could not afford or are reluctant to pay more for PC security. Which is why they'll need additional protections and better if its free of charge.

A-Squared AntiMalware Free is one of the free security software which offers good protection. It is developed by Emsi Software GmbH, an Austrian-based security company which was founded in 2003, a year when the computer world is shocked with a sharp increase in online threats. There are two versions of A-Squared AntiMalware; one of them is the free version while the other is a paid-for version which provides additional real-time protection and better signature update engine. However i'm going to emphasize on the free edition because this is what normally people like: free stuffs.


The free A-Squared AntiMalware is powered by both the Ikarus scanning engine and Emsi Software's own developed scanning engine, making A-Squared a one-of-a-kind double engine scanning software offering protection from both virus and spywares. Installations are fast and smooth, taking only around one to a couple of minutes. It has a very smooth, organized and detailed blue-and-silver user interface which makes malware scanning more fun. Unlike many famous antispywares or antimalwares, A-Squared has a great ability; it allows users to double the task they wanted to perform on the software itself and thus, save users' time and effort. For example, users can do both a signature update and perform a scan simultaneously, so they don't have to perform these two task twice. A-Squared Free also provides users the option to sign up newsletter for free, and its main software application also provides direct links to the latest software articles and company news via the main menu. Configuration by default has everything set up based on the average users' usage so majority of users can just kick start without having to customize the configuration beforehand.


Although A-Squared Free is generally a very good security addon, it is not without flaws. Free edition updates at a slower pace in comparison with other security software, although being detailed in telling users what has been updated. Partially due to the company using the Ikarus scanning engine which is famous for throwing up false positives, A-Squared Free does occasionally cough up things that are actually malware-free, which will require users to recognize between a false positive and a real malware alarm. The deep scan is very slow, always taking up to more than an hour and a half in scanning a newly-reformatted computer with some installed software during my own private testing. That could however, be understandable since A-Squared utilizes two scanning engines for detection.


Overall, this antimalware is still recommendable because it is interactive, stable, handy and most importantly, it is FREE while offering users a reasonably good additional protection.

The latest version of A-Squared AntiMalware Free reaches the v4 mark on the 17th of December 2008. To download A-Squared AntiMalware Free now, click here.