AVG stands for A Very Good deal...Free antivirus (AVG AntiVirus Free Edition)

Member Name: Ghumphrey

Product:	AVG AntiVirus Free Edition
Date:	12/10/09 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its free

Disadvantages: Needs regular updating

AVG Antivirus Free Edition

I have used Norton antivirus and most recently Mc Afee in the past. I got the McAfee free for the first year when I took out my sky package. The year is just about up and I didn't fancy the prospect of forking out for another expensive replacement. I had found McAfee to be decent enough it was better than Norton but both definitely slowed the computer down and if you were running a scan you could do nothing else with the computer whilst the scan round. I began looking around fro alternatives and found the free edition of AVG and after reading a few reviews I decided to give it a go.

How to get the AVG free edition

Over the years I have seen lots of pop up advertising fake antivirus usually for free so I was a bit apprehensive about downloading free anti virus. My initial search fro AVG brought me to their homepage where I could purchase their antivirus over the web but didn't seem to advertise their free version. I decided to look on downloads.com as I have used it before and I managed to the antivirus there. Whilst the free version was available you had to scroll down to a small corner of the screen to get it for free whilst nearly anywhere else on the page would have taken you to the paid version. So it seemed pretty clear that they hoped some people would pay for the product. I didn't and went ahead with the free version. Download was very quick and from download to installation to first scan took around 10 mins.

My opinion

I had McAfee installed for over a year and ran scans pretty regularly. I decided to do an initial scan with the AVG and found that I had two viruses. It was actually the same virus twice and it was a Trojan horse. I have no idea how long it had been there but more worrying was the fact that McAfee hadn't detected it. Once discovered the software took automatic action to repair the infected file and informed me when it was complete.

The overall use of the software is very easy and it takes about an hour or so to run a full scan on the computer. I had noticed that McAfee was starting to scan every time I turned the computer on slowing down the whole start up process dramatically.(This was despite the fact that I had changed the settings to prevent this). With the new programme the start up is back to its usual quick state and in fact the computer seems to run a whole lot faster as a result. For some reason as well since changing I have noticed that my internet also seems to be a lot faster as well. This may be just a coincidence but it's a welcome one nonetheless. So far I have been very happy with this and I am considered installing it on my other home computer.

Summary: Seems better than Mcafee

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