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I’m a firm believer in not having to pay for top-notch virus protection for your computer. Prior to AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 I would install AVG on some computers I’d repair while I’d use Avira’s AntiVir on others. Both were free and worked great.

I upgraded to the free AVG 8.0 in July 08 and really like the enhancements. AVG added spyware protection along with its superb virus protection in this version. Since many virus infections are delivered via website drive-by downloads AVG included LinkScanner technology that checks websites when you do a Google, Yahoo or MSN search. LinkScanner doesn’t work yet in Google’s new Chrome browser but it does work in Internet Explorer and Firefox. AVG continues to include free email scanning for Microsoft Outlook as well.

The bottom line with any antivirus software (free or not) is how well does it protect your computer and, nearly as important, does it use up all your resources slowing down your system? On both points I’d give AVG top marks. According to other reviews it does a better job of preventing virus infections than it does cleaning up infections but in most cases it will leave nearly all viruses non-functional. AVGs scans are fast and its real-time protection won’t slow down your computer like a lot of bloated (and expensive) security software suites.

Download.com gives AVG Anti-Virus 5 stars and over 16,000 users have given it an average of 4 out of 5 stars. Personally, I give the new version 5 stars and have installed it on 3 of my home systems and have started installing it on every system I repair. 

For a complete review of AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 check out the excellent review by Neil Rubenking at PC Magazine.

Happy Computing!

-Bert

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Computer Repair, Review, Security, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.