AVG 9 Free

[Steve's]

Anyone tried the new version of AVG yet and got anything good or bad to report ? Ive noticed theyre on the 2nd build of it already so a few bugs shud have been ironed out at least

[Mystic Mog]

Not tried it on my machine yet - reading the AVG forums, it appears the free version - which I use - still has a few bugs, noticeably the inability to install properly if you have ZA or Comodo firewalls. Having said that, I installed it on my mums machine, which has only the Vista Fw a couple of weeks ago, and everything still appears OK. I did notice a scheduled scan took considerably less time after running the 'optimisation scan' on install.

[Earthling]

Most setups here are now using MSSE, but I did upgrade AVG on the XP VM yesterday. FWIW AVG 9 is using 64.25MB on the XP VM, and MSSE is using 10.39MB in Vista. Wow!

(values from Revo Uninstaller)

[hawklord]

i've just put commodo internet security on mine - comes with everything, including firewall, all in one package and free,

i'll see how it goes

[althea]

I'd be interested to see how that goes,hawklord.
I already use Comodo firewall and I like it.

[hawklord]

seems to work as it should, the system cleaner works,
i've used comodo av before and its ok, so thought i would try the full package as my CA antivirus subscription is about to run out,

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by Steve's

Anyone tried the new version of AVG yet and got anything good or bad to report ?..........

I installed the new AVG on a couple of PCs ten days ago and it's working fine.

Two of the main improvements I've noticed are the introduction of rootkit detection, and as Moggy said, dramatically reduced scan times.

Personally speaking, I'll be sticking with AVG Free for now because of its LinkScanner components (AVG Search-Shield and AVG Active Surf-Shield), its e-mail scanner, and MS Office plug-ins. Those combined features in my opinion give it an advantage over the competition in the free anti-virus market.

[Brett]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

I installed the new AVG on a couple of PCs ten days ago and it's working fine.

Two of the main improvements I've noticed are the introduction of rootkit detection, and as Moggy said, dramatically reduced scan times.

Personally speaking, I'll be sticking with AVG Free for now because of its LinkScanner components (AVG Search-Shield and AVG
Active Surf-Shield), its e-mail scanner, and MS Office plug-ins. Those combined features in my opinion give it an advantage over the competition in the free anti-virus market.

Have you tried Avast av (free)
Is doing a good job for me at home (and on my mail server)
I used to run AVG, but it turned into a resource hog

[Earthling]

Originally Posted by althea

I'd be interested to see how that goes,hawklord.
I already use Comodo firewall and I like it.

You might be surprised to learn Althea that from the point of view of securing your own system from outside attack you have absolutely no need of a firewall at all, as your Netgear router is fully performing that role for you.

The Comodo firewall would only intervene in the event you somehow introduced rogue software into your machine some way other than over the internet, and that software then attempted to make an outbound connection, either to another computer on your home network or to the internet.

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by Brett

Have you tried Avast av (free)
Is doing a good job for me at home (and on my mail server).......

I've never tried it myself Brett but I have installed it on a few old/under-powered PCs and I've had no complaints.

Originally Posted by Brett

.......I used to run AVG, but it turned into a resource hog

I think that used to be the case, but starting with AVG 8.5, its system footprint looks a lot lower.

Here's what my Task Manager shows for the RAM usage for all the active AVG components - I certainly wouldn't call it greedy especially when those values were captured when AVG was doing something:

[Earthling]

I've just run my first AVG9 scan on my XPVM and it turned up and dealt with 51 tracking cookies. If these sites were specifically added to IE's Privacy list then they would not in future be able to plonk their cookies on my comp, but AVG doesn't seem to offer any way of doing this, and other than laboriously entering each one manually I can't see any other way to do it either.

Yet it does seem such an obvious thing to do. Am I missing something here?

EDIT - I have installed Spywareblaster btw, which should now stop most of them from reappearing, but it would still be useful to be able to do it directly from a AV scan.

[Mystic Mog]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

I installed the new AVG on a couple of PCs ten days ago and it's working fine.

Two of the main improvements I've noticed are the introduction of rootkit detection, and as Moggy said, dramatically reduced scan times.

Personally speaking, I'll be sticking with AVG Free for now because of its LinkScanner components (AVG Search-Shield and AVG Active Surf-Shield), its e-mail scanner, and MS Office plug-ins. Those combined features in my opinion give it an advantage over the competition in the free anti-virus market.

SS - out of curiosity - did either of those systems have ZA or Comodo, and if they did, did you encounter any problems?

[Steve's]

SS - AVG8.5 use of my system seems significantly higher than yours, so I will give AVG9 a go. I agree that AVG seems to have some useful extra components compared to over free software, notably the email scanner.

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by Earthling

I've just run my first AVG9 scan on my XPVM and it turned up and dealt with 51 tracking cookies. If these sites were specifically added to IE's Privacy list then they would not in future be able to plonk their cookies on my comp, but AVG doesn't seem to offer any way of doing this, and other than laboriously entering each one manually I can't see any other way to do it either.............

What I do E is to set my IE cookie handling to allow first-party cookies and block the third-party ones. It's worked reliably for years now and the only tracking cookies I get are Firefox ones 'cause I can't find a way to tweak the way it deals with cookies.

A second option is to open AVG then double click the "Resident Shield" icon. There you'll find an option for tracking cookies. You may however find the constant alerts from AVG telling you it's zapped a cookie a bit tiresome.

[Secret Squirrel]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mog

SS - out of curiosity - did either of those systems have ZA or Comodo, and if they did, did you encounter any problems?

No John, neither of those apps were installed.