Back in the days when the internet on a home PC was very unlikely, very few people worried about anti-virus software. Also around this time, there were very few ‘hackers’ and ‘crackers’ mainly because they had no easy access into your computer.
Well things have changed, nearly everyone with a PC, is also on the internet, mainly because the prices have come down in both PC’s and internet call charges. With this uproar in people on the internet has also came a chance for some dastardly people who want to break into someone’s computer and see what files they have on it. So in comes the need for an anti-virus program, or even a firewall (but that’s for another opinion).
There are a couple of free anti-virus programs, but the one that I previously used, Inoculate IT has now ceased to be free. So I have been forced to find something new, and thanks to a couple of people I have been talking to, they advised me to try Grisoft’s AVG. So pleased I was to hear that it’s also free.
Many people think that if they are getting something for free there must be some sort of catch, but I haven’t found any with AVG. It has regular updates, and provides good protection. It had an update to protect against the ‘’ worm virus in under a day, which is pretty impressive.
AVG anti-virus has a lot of extra features. I will start in the order they are likely to affect your PC. Most of these features branch out from the Control Centre, which is the part of the program that loads on boot. Firstly there is the Boot Checker, which checks your system files during the DOS boot of windows. This was very helpful for me, because I had a couple of infected system files, and this quickly sorted them out for me.
The next you are likely to encounter is probably the main Virus-checker. It scans your hard drive for any present viruses and to my surprise it found about 50 infected files on my PC on first use. The good thing was that it was able to heal each of these files for me, and I have since never had an infected file.
Next is if you use Outlook Express like me. I am not too sure if it works with any other email clients, but if it does, then please let me know and I update this opinion. As you have probably guessed it checks all outgoing and incoming emails, before they are opened or sent. I decided to give this a little test, because shortly before I installed it, I had received a worm virus in Outlook Express. A mass mailing virus. The virus replicated itself, and with every email it sent out to a person in my address book, it also sent a file from my hard drive. Thankfully AVG picked up on the virus and stopped it from doing any harm. Well Done AVG.
There is also a resident shield, which is basically the anti-virus scanner working all the time. It constantly checks files modified or downloaded etc. to your computer, and notifies you of anything it finds. I haven’t had any trouble with it though.
The program also comes with its own update manager to automatically update its database to the latest available from the AVG website. You can also schedule the update to check every week or whenever you feel that you would have time for it to check.
There is also a scheduler, which if enabled will run every 24hours to check for viruses on your PC. This is very helpful, if you are prone like me to forgetting about scanning you hard drive.
If you are thinking of the phrase ‘You pay for what you get’. This program is definitely an exception to the rule. It may not look as good as the likes as Norton or McAfee, but in my honest opinion it performs far better than any of these. It may even not be as feature packed as either of the two mentioned above, but I highly doubt that many people use all of the features available for use in Norton or McAfee.
One last thing to note. The AVG Control Centre (the base of the program where everything else stems out of) takes up very little resources. This doesn’t really affect me, but I know that there are some people out there with already limited system resources.
In this day and age it is a risky business trying to run your PC on the internet without some form of Anti-Virus protection so why not go for one that’s free?
I would say to anyone who hasn’t yet went out and spent money on buying one of the brand name Anti-Virus programs yet (maybe even some of those who have). It can’t hurt to try AVG, if you don’t like it you can always uninstall it and reinstall your previous one. I doubt that you won’t like it though. IT is very accessible and easy to use. Highly Recommended.
David