AVG Antivirus Review

Background

AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft) is a Czech company founded in 1991 specialising in security software. They have corporate offices in Europe, USA and the UK.

Products Available (Home & Home Office)

AVG has three core products - AVG Antivirus, AVG Antivirus with Firewall and the more comprehensive AVG Internet Security.

Feature	AVG Antivirus	AVG Antivirus with Firewall	AVG Internet Security
Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware
Safe Search
Anti-Rootkit
Safe Downloads
Safe Instant Messaging
Safe Surf
Technical support
Firewall
Anti-Spam
System tools

Overview

AVG Antivirus and AVG Internet security use the same antivirus engine. Like most of the other well known brands it uses a combination of known malware signatures and a heuristic scanner which detects new malware yet to have signatures defined.

Version 8 of the suite was released in 2008 - the first major update for 3 years. Most other companies upgrade on an annual basis. The version 8 upgrade is a major overhaul of the original version - a lot of work has gone into upgrading the user interface. The old versions had a reputation for being confusing and illogical, but the new one is clear and easier to understand.

Installation

AVG Internet Security was simple to download and the setup process ran without any problems. The only negative point about the installation experience is that it will install the Yahoo toolbar and change your homepage to Yahoo unless you de-select these options. This is something you may expect from a free software package, but is not common on a premium software package like this.

Ease of Use

The main AVG screen presents everything very clearly without confusion. For users who want an 'install and forget' antivirus program this is a good one, although there are advanced options to alter some of the settings if you want to - scan times, how long before deleting files in quarantine, etc.

Manually getting updates and running manual scans is easy for novice users, although the program will do both of these automatically. The scan takes a comparable time to other programs (except ESET NOD32 which is much faster than any others) and scores moderately high in independent tests for malware detection.

There are real-time alerts as warnings are displayed or malware is detected, but there is no percentage complete progress indication to give you an idea of when the scan is nearly finished:

Once the scan completes the following screen appears:

Overall the user experience is good. Any malware or other threats are dealt with efficiently and actions taken clearly displayed.

Effectiveness

AVG Antivirus includes protection against viruses, spyware and rootkits as standard. It is quite effective at dealing with all of these threats having an almost unblemished record achieving the VB100 certification with this and earlier versions. One test (June 2007) was a fail as they missed a wildlist virus. Other independent tests put its detection rate slightly below that of other market leaders.

The firewall (included with the antivirus with firewall and internet security packages) is effective at blocking attacks from outside. For a few days after installation it will ask for connections to be approved the first time applications try to connect to the Internet.

The Internet Security package also includes anti-spam measures, which work effectively. It will also flag up suspect websites and scan them before the page loads. This can lead to a slight delay before a webpage loads.

Positive Points

Negative Points

Conclusion

AVG is a good all-round value for money package. This new version is a long overdue update to version 7.5 and has addressed a lot of the shortcomings from older versions. We would recommend the Internet Security version over the basic Antivirus version because of the additional features that it includes.

It is important that you install an effective defence against malware today. If you like the features AVG offer with their products, download and install today by clicking on the following link:

Fully functional 30-day free trials are available with the option to purchase a licenced version during or at the end of the trial.