AVG Anti-virus

                    An article by Sue

A few months ago, my McAfee Virus Scan came due for 
renewal. Doesn't a year's licence go quickly! The cost now is 
œ25/year and I thought, do I really want to give McAfee any 
more of my money? On the other hand, these days you really 
can't manage without an anti-virus program. But would a free 
one be any good?

A friend of mine works from home, repairing people's PCs and I 
asked him what he used. He'd already recommended 
ZoneAlarm to me as a good free firewall. He said that if you 
want a good free antivirus, he recommended AVG to his 
customers. I went to their homepage at www.grisoft.com and 
downloaded AVG Free Edition.

This is for single home users, can be used without any 
limitations and you can also download free updates to get the 
latest virus definitions. 

With the free version you get email protection, on-demand 
scanning, basic scheduled tests, automatic updates, healing of 
infected files and a virus vault for quarantine. It scans Word 
macros too. There are few restrictions - no advanced test 
schedules, a basic interface and no technical support. It can't be 
used on servers or networks. So far none of those have caused 
me any problems.

Downloading is quick and simple, a short questionnaire to 
complete and a serial number is emailed to you. I don't want 
anything complicated from my anti-virus program and AVG's 
simplicity appeals to me. I've got it set to update itself every day, 
it has warned me of a trojan dialler that tried to install itself, and 
every 24 hours it suggests a full scan of my system. McAfee's 
full scan used to take forever; AVG's takes about 20 minutes but 
is quite comprehensive. 

If you want to buy the professional edition, a two year licence 
costs $33.30 (about œ18 at the current exchange rate). So even 
that is a much better deal than McAfee.

Highly recommended!















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