Every computer security company under the sun releases new versions of their product line once a year. AVG is no difference, and the latest versions of the company’s security software has just been released to the public.
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 is, the name implies it already, the free basic version of the company’s security software line-up. The other two programs are AVG Anti-Virus 2012 and AVG Internet Security 2012. How do the programs differ from each other?
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 comes with anti-virus and anti-spyware components, e-mail protection, a link scanner and identity protection.
Users who need more protection or better support need to look at the other two products which offer that. The Internet Security 2012 version for example comes with a firewall, anti-spam, anti-rootkit an online shield and free technical support.
The AVG Software Installer offers a custom or automatic installation. It is usually better to select the custom install options, as it can be used to disable modules like the LinkScanner that may not be needed by all users.
The installer furthermore tries to make AVG Secure Search the default search provider and to install the AVG Security Toolbar.
The interface looks very streamlined in this updated version of the software. Users find the available modules lined up in the main interface. Next to those are options to scan the system and update the program right from the main screen. The only other prominent link or button in that interface is the My Apps link which apparently links to a list of AVG Apps that are installed on the user’s system.
Additional tools and information are available in the menu at the top.
A click on a module in the main interface opens a new page with settings and information. Here it is possible to make changes to the configuration, for instance by including tracking cookies in the scan, managing exceptions or running a root-kit scan on the system.
The free version of AVG Anti-Virus comes with a PC Analyzer component that scans the PC for Registry errors, junk files, fragmentation or broken shortcuts. It has been a trend in recent years to add system maintenance tools to top of the line products.
One interesting tool that has been added in the new version is a monitoring tool that notifies the user if a web browser is consuming to much memory. It then offers to restart the web browser which often resolves the high memory situation.
Other tools that have seen improvements are AVG’s Linkscanner browser extension which now uses heuristics to react to threats that are not known yet and AVG Accelerator which is a tool to speed up the streaming of files on YouTube and the downloading at Download.com.
Existing AVG users can use the Tools > Update menu to update their version to the latest. Those who do not want to use the internal updater can download the latest version of AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 from the official AVG website.
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I gave up on AVG a month ago and switched to MSE. Like many of today’s “suites” AVG has gotten too bloated for me. 3 services, 8 processes, 500MB of disk space equals too much overhead for my tastes.
They’re trying to offer more and more since MS offered its solution. But this has a “cost” on resources. It may easily considered as “bloatware”.
And indeed, personally too… MSE and Windows Firewall is all I need. Both extremely light and doing their jobs greatly.
for those [like me] who like to get a full download/offline installer (for the times when a online installer isn’t practical)
I found a post in the AVG Forums (http://forums.avg.com/au-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=171231 at the bottom of that post) that pointed to the AVG website page that has the full downloads
which is:
http://free.avg.com/ww-en/download.prd-afh
and we can download the documentation/manual and also get the virus definition update from there as well :-)
Great find, thanks so much for posting.
I have an old laptop that really needs replacing, with 512 MB RAM, I can only do so much. MSE uses around 80MB or so, Avast and Avira services don’t usually go above 30 or 40, while Firefox eats much of the rest. I’ve long ditched AVG :(