Paying for anti-virus!? Use AVG Free... (AVG AntiVirus Free Edition)

Member Name: stuff10

Product:	AVG AntiVirus Free Edition
Date:	01/07/09 (158 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, lovely interface, quick and powerful to use

Disadvantages: Occasional problems with upgrading

AVG is a powerful anti-virus program created by AVG Technologies (formerly known as Grisoft). It is available as a free download from free.avg.com, although be careful what you click on as they do their best to get you to upgrade to the Pro version or their new Internet Security product.

The free version includes: anti-virus, anti-spyware, a link scanner and a security toolbar all of which are suitable for home users. It doesn't include features such as a anti-rootkit, anti-spam or a firewall, but these can be found on the paid-for versions if you require them. However, most people will find the free version perfectly adequate. I didn't install the toolbar (I've got enough on my browser), but I do find the link scanner to be useful. What this does is add an icon onto your search results pages (on Google) to alert you if the site you're about to visit is safe or not - a pretty useful feature I'm sure you'll agree.

The download itself is 63mb, but this shouldn't take long on a broadband connection. AVG has a fairly standard installation procedure and will even to scan your computer for infections straight away (which is always a good idea). Once the initial scan has been completed you'll be able to dive in and modify the options to your requirements...

The user interface is nicely designed, quick to load and very easy to work with. Click on Computer Scanner to scan your machine or schedule a daily/weekly/monthly scan which will run in the background whilst you do your work.

I've been using AVG for a fair few years and it is a good tool to have (especially for free). However, there are a few niggles that annoy me... Firstly the free version is quite well hidden on the website and it takes a fair few clicks to download, I bet a few people have mistakenly paid for the Pro version when they really only wanted the free one. Secondly, new versions seem to require a whole new installation - the upgrade to version 8.5 for example required you to download the whole program again, not just update it through the usual definitions update. This can be a bit of a pain cos you don't really wanna have to spend any time on your anti-virus software, it should run in the background and only ever alert you if there's a problem.

I hate to end a review negatively, especially if it's a good product. So I'll add this: AVG is an excellent anti-virus program and work perfectly 99.9% of the time, everybody should have it installed on their machine. 5/5 cos it's free! :)

Summary: Don't pay for your anti-virus - give AVG Free a try instead

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