AVG goes toe to toe with MS in consumer security fight AVG is putting an emphasis on increased speed with a revamp of its free and paid for security suites. The latest revamp - AVG 9.0 - boasts 50 per cent faster speed and increased ease of use. Improvements in speed have been achieved by skipping the scan of files already marked as safe in future scans unless the file structure …
Given that there are all sorts of companies (ISPs, banks, you name it) throwing out free copies of full featured security packages who exactly bothers with these feeble attempts? I can have Kaspersky or Mcafee for nothing. And while I don't need either (Linux user) I can't believe there are many people out there who don't have access to something reasonable.
Having said that it may be that some people don't know they can get this free software. I was completely unaware that my bank offered free AV software until I was informed by another customer. Likewise I know people who were unaware that their ISP offered free a AV package.
So the advice to people who are thinking of installing either of these packages, or one of the competitiors, should be to check if they can get a full featured package gratis.
They do a paid-for version??
How many people have seen it in the wild?
I see hundreds of AVG-free installs, but not the paid-for variety.
That's all a bit tongue-in-cheek as I do know of one establishment with a 50-seat license, but otherwise I know many businesses which (although they shouldn't) run the free version.
The only way MSE is going to get a majority market share is by rolling out in automatic updates. A lot of people still have a mistrust of MS, especially those who install AV on peoples computers. And as MSE doesn't offer any more than AVG does, people are going to stick with what they know.
It would take a major fubar from Grisoft to encourate a mass migration to MSE.
Other free antivirus solutions are available and even if something is free you'd be a fool if you didn't do a little market research.
http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/antivirus.html
http://www.freerav.com/
http://www.free-av.com/en/download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Given that AVG has a much worse detection rate than Avira for one I've always been puzzled by the popularity of AVG. I know that they are claiming improvements in scanning speed, but given that it's always been worse than half as fast as Avira or Avast they've got a lot of catching up to do.
Was it somewhere around version 7 where it bloated up and was also a pig to update? The road to be using the next code version required an install - so I moved over to Avira which seems to bug me less (with the advertising .exe preventing from running, of course).
I also think AVG was advertising on updates. Yes, it's free - but every update? I find that too frequent. Bug me not, please - twice a month, for example, and I'd be happy to look and think about it rather than defeat it.
Can I admit that I'm running MSE but frankly never have any virus warnings that I've not gone 98.7% of the way to causing? And those are in a VM ;-)
Until they dump Linkscanner and any and all PHBs that thought it was a good idea [1] and (Dogbert forbid) any engineers that thought it was a good idea, I can no longer recommend it to anybody.
[1] For the hard of thinking - forget about all the traffic generation hoo-hah: LinkScanner is a fundamentally flawed idea. The safest thing to do with a webpage is simply not download it in the first place.
Given the way AVG bloated up and came with link scammer.. I mean scanner I was looking for an alternative. Any on-demand scan brings up a HUGE program window complete with a warning that you might not be fully protected and invited you to buy into the paid for version.
What do I use now? MSE. Who is more likely to be aware of virus' and more able to deliver updated definitions than MS? I don't have any nags about upgrading for 'enhanced' protection and it does what it does quietly in the background like an AV program should.
"True, but it's still a damn sight better than AVG and MSE."
WTH are you smoking??
McAfee (and Norton to be fair) are about the WORST AV packages now a days. Neither of them could catch an elephant and a marching band coming into the system, let alone a virus that has been around for years. Been there, seen it happen on a daily basis. The only reasons people even use McAfee or Norton today and it either came preinstalled (60 day trial woohoo) or because they remember the good old days when they were the shit. And dont even get me started on the slowdowns and crashing caused by them.
I got out of working on cars and ditched all my tools but you sir certainly sound like one.
Bought the paid version for my netbook to get the firewall component as well (well "my company" did, being self employed). Thinking this would be as good as the free virus part.
I have now turned off the firewall as it's a total pain in the arse. It's not the stuff that bugs you for permission, it's the stupid profile stuff for when you roam. It's supposed to detect the network you are roaming onto and set the profile accordingly (e.g. tight lock down for a public hot spot, open wifi, less restrictive at work, and more open on the home network). The thing is useless as it grinds away for 10 minutes consuming half a gig of memory in the process before ultimately deciding what profile to select (in the meantime it denies all access) and then half the time gets it wrong!
Utter crap. I'm just on XP's firewall now and the PC is so much quicker.
Can't fault the anti-virus stuff, but then I could have got that free.
I'm thinking of going back to the free version of Avast though. Daft clunky UI with stupid "alert alert!" voices, but if you don't need all that it pretty much sits there silently doing it's job.
Annoyingly I paid a 2 year sub on AVG with a year still to go.
In years gone by I used to use Dr. Solomons, until it became horribly expensive... and acquired by McAfee. I then used McAfee for a while until it became this enormous bloated mess that didn't seem to work well.
It was then AVG free edition. I've been using it without issue for years now, but I would never, EVER pay for the thing! AVG is waaaaaayyyyyy over-priced for what it does.
I actually tried McAfee 2009 (the bank was offering it for free)... HUGE mistake! It made my Vista 64 crash on start-up every single time. Google'd for it, known issue that McAfee were ignoring, I had to disable a bunch of services, but the damage was already done. Hell even after removing it AND using McAfee Remover, I was still getting the crashes on start-up. SP2 for Vista eventually fixed that. I went back to AVG free, which at least worked (though I do not install link scanner, what's the point, in only works with IE and I use Opera anyway!).
Finally; I never use Norton... ever! Been burned so many times in the past by that PoS that I refuse to have it anywhere near my machines. If it comes pre-installed it's the first thing removed - IF you can remove it! Like McAfee, it's like a growth that hooks in all over and is never fully removed, leaving DLL's all over the place *shudder*
"Recommendations from tech savvy friends were one of the main reasons consumers latched onto AVG in the first place. AVG lost a lot of goodwill in this area with the traffic-spewing fiasco that attached to version 8.0 of its security scanner."
I think mostly this was the ridicule false positives that got people either mad as dogs (would be me), or seriously doubting it would ever catch a brontosaurus in a one way corridor.
Never had a problem with McAfee letting in a virus. It certainly scores a lot higher than AVG on it's detection rate, but then a ten year out of date copy would probably still whup AVG on that score. The biggest issues I have come across with McAfee have been managing the corporate version where EPO when it wasn't telling me about machines that it wasn't updating. Home versions don't have that problem.
I tend to avoid Kaspersky however because it eats disk space and the only way to recover the space is to disable Kaspersky while you do it. Kaspersky obviously don't see it as a problem because their test systems probably have terrabytes of space. This is a particular pain on basic systems with small HDDs or SSDs.
And if you get personal again I'll whack you with my spanner. Or alternatively I think your definition of the term Grease Monkey is both naive and decades out of date. Quaint.
James O'Brien said: "WTH are you smoking?? McAfee (and Norton to be fair) are about the WORST AV packages now a days. Neither of them could catch an elephant and a marching band coming into the system, let alone a virus that has been around for years."
---------
Yep. What he said.
McAfee and Norton and by far the most bloated, ineffectual pieces of rubbish in the AV world. I've lost count of the number of noobs that have had their systems crippled and brought to its kneed by these two crappy products.
How anyone with any level of computer experience could not utterly condemn these products is totally beyond me.
Maybe I should get me some of what Grease Monkey is smoking.
I have previously used AVG, McAfee, Norton and a bunch of other crapware. I can say having used all this that the Antivirus I will be using for a fairly long time is Kaspersky Anti-Virus. With other AV software i have often had to run other tools (ie: Hijackthis) to clean up the mess they missed out. With Kaspersky all of the nasties which have leaked in from college have been wiped out without me having to do anything manually.
AVG may be widely used, but it's usually against the license.
We've replaced many a customer that has AVG free on their business machines. So far, free AV in a commercial environment is limited to Comodo and MS Security Essentials.
Secondly, the only AVG customers we have, are sites that use Kaseya and their inbuilt AVG option.
Lastly MSE is small, fast, and unobtrusive. The same cannot be said for AVG past 7.5...
I've been curious about why the US seems to get a discount. Does the reported price in the UK include the VAT, because the US price doesn't include sales tax (because the tax is calculated differently between states and even within municipalities within a state). That doesn't account completely for the difference though, if one accounts for an 8% sales tax.
I'm wondering if there are any UK products that are cheaper in the UK than in the US
Because it eats gigabytes of disk space by never deleting it's temporary files. It's totally unnecessary, adds no functionality and so can only be classed as a bug, but they seem very reluctant to fix it. They don't even document the procedure to delete these files, when in fact they could achieve it with a simple button or menu item or better yet not keep the files in the first place. They're temporary for fucks sake!
http://webtrickz.com/how-to-remove-kaspersky-temporary-files-to-free-up-disk-space-featured/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2023
