Well I finally got a product that didn’t start with a “V” but they managed to sneak one in the middle! This month I want to share my thoughts on AVG, an anti-virus and malware product suite offered by Grisoft. Initially a European company, Grisoft has enjoyed significant growth and now also has a US headquarters.

I’ve personally been using AVG for a number of years on both my home PCs and in corporate environments. It was interesting to look at other reviews before writing this blog as they were all over the board on whether they liked it or had problems. In general I’ve been very happy with AVG although I do have a few pet peeves that I’ll share later on.

I was actually using some of the bigger names like Symantec and McAfee (why do they insist on pronouncing it MacAfee?) which drove me to look for alternative products. Symantec seemed to cause a number of problems, particularly when upgrading. McAfee was always losing track of the fact that you had a current license making it necessary to constantly validate licenses or worse causing me to mistakenly order a new copy.

At AVG’s core is it’s anti-virus product. The software is extremely easy to install and offers an aggressive update service. It is even compatible with all my existing software. My biggest issue has been the update pop-ups that open up in the middle of the screen and sometimes override the program I’m working with. I’m sure AVG would like us to know its working but hey, how about a small message balloon from the toolbar instead?

AVG also offers a full suite of additional services such as firewalls, anti-spam, and anti-spyware. These additional products are where most of the other reviews found fault. I have not had a lot of experience with them except for the firewall product. It seemed to work well until we upgraded to release 7.5 where we found it to interfere with a VPN and Exchange server. It took a bit of detective work and trial & error testing to finally straighten it all out.

As for anti-spam and anti-spyware, we have typically relied on other products for this protection. However, AVG offers a complete bundle for the individual, SMB or enterprise environment. Their licensing model is in two year increments making the per-seat pricing very attractive. On average about $7/year per PC for anti-virus and $20 to $25 for the full suite at 100 computers. I wasn’t sure why the Server Suite for the SMB was higher than the same enterprise product though.

The only other gripe I have, if you want to call it that, is with the scheduled scanner. The default is 8:00 am or when the user first turns on their PC. On older machines this can really slow things down so we typically found that changing the time to the user’s lunch hour helped considerably, though I didn’t notice much of a slowdown on my new duo-core.

Want to try it at home? AVG offers a free version. Especially great if you have kids in school and are tired of paying a fee for some of the other programs out there. This bit of advice is likely worth every penny you are paying for this blog!

The other anti-virus product that I consider in this same class is Trend Micro but I have never actively purchased it. It usually came pre-packaged on new PCs. It appears to have a decent following but a remote network support company I worked with flip flopped back and forth on the products until eventually settling on AVG as its bundled anti-virus product. Not sure of the exact reasoning but they had to run a number of additional clients on the desktop for their service and I believe the AVG ran a little smoother.

What’s your experience been? Please let us know. We look forward to your comments.

Mark

Resources

www.grisoft.com  - AVG home site.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2060862,00.asp               AVG review on PC Magazine

http://bizsecurity.about.com/od/securityproductreviews/fr/avgreview.htm      About.com AVG review

Filed under: Business Articles on July 30th, 2007 |