14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Avira announced that it plans to refresh older consumer products and upgrade them to version 2013, with no cost for users running a paid bundle (Premium Antivirus and Internet Security).
This refers to 2- and 3-year old technology, specifically versions 2010 and 2012, which are supported for at least another year, with engine and signature updates being delivered until 01.31.2015 and 09.27.2015 respectively.
The reason behind this move is twofold. First, the company wants to make sure that its customers benefit from the best protection available.
From this point of view, provided that malware has become more cunning and elaborate, older products are no longer highly efficient in the fight against them.
The second reason is that the company wants to pour as much effort as possible into active development and improvement of the latest version of its protection suites.
Considering all this, Avira will initiate a migration process of the old versions of their products gradually, first for those still using version 2010 of the packages, on July 9, 2013, with an end date set to July 17, for all supported languages and products.
For those with 2012 builds on their systems, the procedure will commence on July 22 and it should end on August 7, 2013.
The entire operation is transparent, with a utility (upgrade assistant) being pushed to users, who have the possibility to decline the upgrade.
Furthermore, the upgrade assistant will only pop for operating systems that are supported by the latest Avira product, which do not include Windows XP SP2 and earlier.
During the procedure, all settings are transferred and the validity of the license in the case of paid products remains unaffected.
According to Avira Product Manager Sorin Mustaca, the prevalent OS among the users targeted for the migration continues to be Windows XP, although its overall market share is in drastic decline. However, the list includes newer operating system as well, even Windows 8.
Avira products are available for download here.