Grisoft AVG - Antivirus Scanner

Courtesy of the alt.comp.virus newsgroup participants.
(These "anti-malware" pages are the result of a continuing cooperative effort.)


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Platforms: Win95, Win98, ME, NT, Win2000Pro

Pricing options:

AVG is FREE if you live outside mainland Europe, but *if* you want support, you have to buy that separately at $19.95 per year. The Professional Version includes unlimited support, and costs $39.95 for a single licence.

Pros:

• performance impact
• Very Easy to use
• Checks Email and safe stamps if no virus found
• Free (except mainland Europe)
• Uses Heuristics by default

Cons:

• Updates aren't all that frequent (this is quite a drawback).
• Support is not free (Currently $19.95 per year)
• Web site doesn't have much technical support information
• Just adequate detection. (Usually does well in ITW tests).

Features:

• AVG Resident Protection
• AVG Email Scanner
• AVG On-Demand Scanner
• Scheduled Tests Free Updates on monthly basis
• Automatic Update feature
• Easy-To-Use Interface
• Automatic Healing of infected files
• AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files

Components :

• The components are Integrated into the AVG Modular core.
• AVG Resident Shield - On access scanner
• AVG Email Scanner - Email specific scanner with a certification option also automatically checks for malicious Java applets and scripts embedded in web pages.
• AVG On-Demand Scanner - can be configured to scan only the files that you want to scan, or do full scans.
• Includes support for removable media such as Zip drives.
• Includes a Shell Extension to allow quick scanner access in Windows Explorer.

Engine :
AVG Virus Stalker - heuristics based scanning engine.

Updating :
Automatic Scheduled or manual from web site.

Update Frequency :
Usually updates are released once a month, and though there may be specific patches released, this is not always the case.

There are also several other components in the Professional (pay for) version including Scanners for NTServer and Exchange, but the technology is the same in the Free Version. Professional edition includes unlimited technical support. (If you are a charity, educational user or NPO you can get the pro edition free)