AVG Free - worth every penny?

[NiceCupOfTea]

Just having cleaned several viruses from my computer using NOD32 having had AVG Free installed and running for as long as I can remember, I am coming to the conclusion that AVG Free is a sack of shit!

It's not detected anything, meanwhile my system is riddled with viruses

Is it basically crap free software? If so, what's worth paying for?

[Biker's Nemesis]

I also have AVG and Spybot Search & Destroy.
I would appreciate any advice.

Thanks

[chris.mapey]

I switched from AVG free to Avast free when I installed Office 2007 Beta (there were compibility probs with AVG)

No problems with Avast as far as I am concerned. Doesn't seem to eat resources like some, and the price is right...

Chris

[ThePassenger]

To be honest, AVG-Free seems worth it to my mind.
I've seen Norton, Symantec miss things and they are supposed to be the heavy hitters.
Of course having said that I've just utterly killed my Windows system off and replaced it with Ubuntu as I got fed up with fighting the damn thing

[SneakyNeil]

I don't think it's crap, no antivirus is 100% and each fills cracks that others leave. That said, NOD is ace!

[roadsweeper]

Kaspersky, AdAware, Spybot S&D and HijackThis. A potent combined defence.

[Plotloss]

Never had an issue with AVG, use others to double check but a nasty has never got in.

[FourWheelDrift]

chris.mapey said:

I switched from AVG free to Avast free when I installed Office 2007 Beta (there were compibility probs with AVG)

No problems with Avast as far as I am concerned. Doesn't seem to eat resources like some, and the price is right...

Chris

I have Avast, along with Windows defender, Adaware, Spybot. I have everything on auto checking, I open the Avast console up for the first time in ages last week to find I hadn't run a full antivirus scan since September 2005. Oooop. I started it up, it did the scan didn't find anything. And there wasn't anything to find anyway as the others always catch the spyware and anything downloaded is automatically scanned by Avast and deletes anything if it has a virus/trojan attached.

Can't rate it higher personally

[roy the boy]

FourWheelDrift said:

I have Avast, along with Windows defender, Adaware, Spybot. I have everything on auto

Can't rate it higher personally

Same here - no problems in 3 years.

[nicecupoftea]

SneakyNeil said:

I don't think it's crap, no antivirus is 100% and each fills cracks that others leave. That said, NOD is ace!

I appreciate that - it's just that NOD32 found 3 or 4 separate ones, and since I installed it it's found several in new mail (AVG has never found anything).

Makes me wonder just how good it is...

[jamieboy]

nicecupoftea said:

I appreciate that - it's just that NOD32 found 3 or 4 separate ones, and since I installed it it's found several in new mail (AVG has never found anything).

Which ones did it find? If your AVG install is bang up-to-date and it's missing things, then it's probably worth letting Grisoft know.

[nicecupoftea]

from memory:

win32/BackAttack.15 trojan
Win32/Dialer.Q
Win32/Adware.Aureate

and soemthing called cokejoke.

[ThePassenger]

nicecupoftea said:

from memory:

win32/BackAttack.15 trojan
Win32/Dialer.Q
Win32/Adware.Aureate

and soemthing called cokejoke.

AdAware-BackAttack, Dialer.Q (generic dialer descriptor), and Adware.Aureate aren't trojans/viruses.

They're malware / adware.

So, no offense, AVG wouldn't go after them as it's strictly an AV product; to wipe out those buggers it'd be a SpyBot or AdAware jobbie. Probably in safe mode.

[nicecupoftea]

Fair enough - SPybot didn't pick them up in normal mode.

It's stopped an irritating mouse freeze thing I had going on, but the machine still needs rebuilding just as soon as I've managed to work out why there are 4 or 5 files that I can't load or copy but that play fine in media player

[falcemob]

Use AVG spyware, it will probably pick the trackers you mentioned. AVG Free is an AV program not anti spyware.

[that daddy]

Use AVG on all my machines never had a problem,been using it about 3 years (after Norton went crap),but i dont download loads of crap either,also use spybot search and destroy,no problems either with that,never got any viruses.

[annodomini2]

nicecupoftea said:

SneakyNeil said:

I don't think it's crap, no antivirus is 100% and each fills cracks that others leave. That said, NOD is ace!

I appreciate that - it's just that NOD32 found 3 or 4 separate ones, and since I installed it it's found several in new mail (AVG has never found anything).

Makes me wonder just how good it is...

You've also got to remember that NOD32 is a commercial piece of software not free. AVG has a commercial version with a more advanced search algorithm(s). They're not going to give away all the good stuff.

But for free you are hard to find better.

[JonRB]

I'm using AVG Network Edition on my machines as it covers AV, spyware, malware and all sorts. I don't think an AV-only product like AVG Free edition cuts it any more - you need a more holistic approach that AV-only doesn't provide.

annodomini2 said:

AVG has a commercial version with a more advanced search algorithm(s). They're not going to give away all the good stuff.

That's the attitude I always take, hence running a commercial version of AVG.

Edited by JonRB on Saturday 3rd February 11:28

[SGirl]

chris.mapey said:

I switched from AVG free to Avast free when I installed Office 2007 Beta (there were compibility probs with AVG)

No problems with Avast as far as I am concerned. Doesn't seem to eat resources like some, and the price is right...

Chris

Just a small aside, if I may. I've just started running Avast, and just about everything is running more slowly now. Should I change something in the settings to stop this happening?

[leorest]

SGirl said:

Just a small aside, if I may. I've just started running Avast, and just about everything is running more slowly now. Should I change something in the settings to stop this happening?

Were you running another anti-virus prog before? It would seem likely that it would run slower with aditional software running.