Customer Reviews

AVG Internet Security 3 User - 2 Year Subscription

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

AVG is best known for their free antivirus though they have offered for years a full security suite. I had never bothered to try AVG Internet Security (AVG IS), mainly because it is an expensive package in comparison to most of the other offerings on the market. That said, it is a solid product and worth consideration in spite of the cost.

I should start by stating, for the record, that I had a dreadful install experience. AVG IS partially installed itself and then errored out. After a reboot, AVG IS was alive but outdated, and what was broken was the ability to update. Worse, the uninstall was also broken. After getting the uninstall ironed out, I tried to install again and this time everything was much smoother.

AVG IS is organized and clean with a very clear and easy-to-understand overview dashboard. At a glance you can tell what is active and what is not active. Double-clicking on any of the icons in this view gives access to adjustment controls by which the component in question can be manipulated and set as desired. I like this particular view. One thing that is not clear, though, is that to get to the real nuts and bolts of the various components' configurations, one must use the pull-down menus, not the icons.

AVG's firewall appears to do a good job of hiding the system on the net, locking down service ports and cutting off ping responses. I was unable to break it. However, where it gets interesting is in the control afforded the user - individual applications can be locked down, policies set for different networks, and so much more. Other firewalls do this, but AVG's organization in the interface is better than average.

AVG's track racord as an antivirus vendor is well known. However, with versions prior to 9.0 their antivirus was slow, intrusive and hard to interrupt. AVG seems to have gotten the idea of how to improve this - it took about 90 minutes to scan over 1,000,000 items if you include the registry and even running at full speed I hardly noticed except for the fact that I had the task manager open and saw an occasional spike in CPU activity. I launched several applications, typed a lot, and even searched for a file on the hard drive and saw no real impact on the system. Cycles consumed seemed to be consistently under 10%.

AVG throws a lot of other things into the mix that you'd expect in a decent suite - antispam, antispyware, rootkit detection, and several other components. What surprised me was to find a process viewer that has the ability to kill processes, accessible from the dashboard under system tools. I have never worked with a security suite with that built-in as part of the package. Included is a connectivity viewer and even a startup process viewer, with the ability to manipulate the entries within. That's a very nice plus.

I've been unable to work with the antispam up to this point, as I get no spam. Even so, there are many, many settings that can be adjusted to the antispam, such as adding a blacklist server such as spamcop to assist with checking, Bayesian training and a lot more. Based on the feature set I suspect this antispam is very effective.

AVG IT includes a McAfee-style system of evaluating returns from search engines, marking unsafe links in the results window. It is not as thorough as McAfee's Site Advisor, but it is effective in giving you heads-up when there is a possible danger ahead.

There are two things that AVG does not have that I wish were present. First, there is no parental control module. It looks like AVG made no effort at all to include a parental controls module, and while that's ok it is something that most other security suites include. I was unable to even find a manual block list - if it's there, I cannot find it. Second, I found no ability to see the presence of other computers on the network. It is not something that I have found in a lot of suites but it's a very nice-to-have.

AVG has put together a very nice internet security suite. The main components, the antivirus and the firewall, are both very effective and all of the other components seem to be working nicely. There is room for some improvement/expansion, as is true with most security suites, but what is here is very polished and clean. AVG is a little pricey when compared to most other suites, but in spite of that cost it is very much worth consideration when looking at computer security suites.

I am using AVG INTERNET SECURITY 9.0 for over a month now. But I never bought it. What I did buy was an older AVG security suite (v7.5), 2 years ago. Nevertheless, whenever a later version becomes available, the suite updates itself to the latest version -- FREE! It happened at least three times over these past years, with versions 8.0, 8.5 and recently 9.
You have to respect a company that does this! With AVG a 2 year license means you shall have the latest security suite for 2 years (and not just new database definitions). Can you imagine buying McAfee or Norton 2009 in October and in March been offered their later release, free?

As a security suite, AVG is light and reliable. It does not tax my system resources either idle or actively scanning, and one can trade speed for resources with a scalable slider. The interface is user friendly and intuitive. The default settings will protect the initiate user from confusing alerts and warnings. On the other hand, the experienced user can dive in and configure the suite to suit him best.

The only thing I did not like with v9.0 are the icons in the main interface, which I found bland and boring. But appearances are a very minor thing when it comes to security suites.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

AVG Internet Security is not compatible with Windows 7 networking features. After many, many iterations with AVG customer support, they were unable to configure the firewall to successfully set up sharing for media files and documents, meaning that you can't play media files from one computer on another or open/copy documents from one computer on another. In the end, I have had to disable the AVG firewall and revert to using the native windows 7 firewall, which works fine. I am an engineer and programmer, and while AVG was quick to respond, they never offered any suggestions that were even close to the mark even after I downloaded their troubleshooting software and uploaded tons of data to them related to the problem.

Update: after I told AVG about this review, they sent me a configuration file that allowed windows 7 networking for media content. However, this was accomplished by enabling access to my media files, photos, and documents to the entire internet. In other words, anyone on the internet could theoretically access any or all of my files. Hardly what I call security.

I have used McAfee, Norton, and some other Internet Security software in the past. Recently I heard the hype about AVG from a friend...so I decided I was going to try it out (and it's actually the best time for me as my Norton subscription on two of three computers had already expired).

A few days later I came across a fabulous deal at Newegg on an AVG Internet Security 3 User - 2 Year Subscription but the software was sold out. So I looked further and ended up ordering it from Amazon.com because they had it in-stock and was also offering a great deal. The order was placed on a Monday night and the package was shipped out the very next day and that's pretty fast! I did it on a 2-day shipment because my two of three computers have no internet security protection; and the package arrived by Thursday. I installed AVG Internet Security the very same evening on the two mentioned computers (one 32-bit XP Home desktop, the other 32-bit Vista laptop) at first and the software seemed to run fine on both machines. With the third computer (64-bit Vista laptop) still has 40-something days of Norton subscription remaining, I instead decided to perform a test on it by running a complete scan using Norton. At the end, Norton found a couple of lame tracking cookies...as it usually does. I then removed Norton, installed AVG Internet Security and ran another complete scan on it. Wouldn't you know? AVG caught a virus that Norton had just missed earlier. So you know a similar thing happened with the other laptop: This time AVG found a Trojan virus there - again, another miss by Norton. Surprised?!?

The bottom line: Even though I'm not a computer expert, but after having been acquainted with home computers for over 20 years and now to deal with internet threats and a variety of internet security software, I think I pretty much know exactly what I look for when it comes to protecting my PCs. Therefore, please do not waste your money on some BIG honchos like Norton or the "fading-from-the-limelight" McAfee or any other Internet security software that only does half of what they are designed to do and consider investing your hard-earned money with AVG. Trust me, it's so worth every penny of it and you (like me) will be very happy with the product! BTW, for the record, I don't work for AVG, period...(but I would REALLY like to). :)

I have tried Norton and Kaspersky products over the years, but they have been less than stellar. Norton became bloatware when I used it a couple years ago that lagged the system down. McAfee became jokeware. Kaspersky 2009 seemed ok, but I never could load it on one of my computers and their help was anything but help. After reading the reviews I settled for AVG as the lesser of the evils. I was able to load it on all three of my computers for real. AVG even told me to update one of software programs as it had a bug that would cause issues with AVG. This is probably why I couldn't load Kaspersky last year. AVG works like a charm. No system loading noticed, no slowness in browsers. It's nice to have found software that actually does what it claims. I bought it elsewhere for half the cost of Amazon, and with a 2 year subscription for three computers, you just can't beat it for value and performance. Please, I hope AVG continues to produce good products!

In past years I have used 3 other top name security products for my computer. They were McAfee, Norton and CA internet security products. Of those 3 Norton and CA were the most useful although complicated to set up. They also drastically slowed down my computer.Near the end of my subscription with CA I wondered if it was even working at all. None of them are even in the same classification as the AVG Internet Security product which does NOT slow down your computer. AVG completely surpasses all three of the previously used products in performance, ease of use and compatibility with my older model computer from 2002.The installation was a snap basically because of its easy to understand instructions. The software actually does what the package says it will do.
AVG Internet Security is slightly more expensive than some other products on the market today but well worth the money especially if you find it on sale from Amazon where the price is nicely competitive. Also, having a 2 year subscription on board up front saves money and hassle for TWO whole years! This is actually cheaper than purchasing for 1 year and then renewing for the 2nd year. In addition, the version I bought will support 3 users which really didn't cost me anything extra. I recommend AVG to anyone who really wants something that is easy and completely effective without slowing down their computer.

I have used avg free for years now but now that i bought the paid version i will never go back. This offers a lot more protection and it does the job well.. Easy to install and update to the newest version.. might have some trouble with shuting off the windows defender of vista a few times but after you turn it back on a few times it works perfect!

great product, recommended by several computor "geeks" as i dont know much on this topic, all said avg is the best protection on the market. have been using avg for about 4 yrs and have not had a single issue. have bought 2 new computors in the last year and have earased both mccaffee and norton security that came w/ them and replaced w/ avg. also, i bought this on amazon for $25 cheaper than walmart and walmarts is 1 year 2 users and this is 3 users 2 years.

I got a nasty computer virus. I had PC Tools Internet Security installed at the time. Unfortunately, PC tools had no idea I had a virus, much less the ability to fix it.

I had used Norton and McAfee in the past, and hated them, so I started doing asking my computer-geek friends which virus protection they used, and most of them answered AVG. Well, my friends may be nerds, but they're darn smart nerds, so I trust their advise when it comes to computers.

I installed AVG, and sure enough, it found the virus that I was aware of, and about 3 more that I had no idea I had. So, I'm happy with the performance.

Also, it doesn't seem to choke up my system nearly as much as the 3 previously mentioned virus protection software did. I absolutely could not run any serious games when any of those 3 were on. So I'm happy with that.

BUT... (and it's me, so you had to know there was a but coming, right?) I run some weird programs on my computer. Since installing AVG, it won't let me run these programs... no option for me to tell it to allow this program to run... just... a great big fat error message from the program. Like the Sony station launcher, or the facebook chat... both worked great before I installed AVG. Suddenly, neither work.

And that brings me to the one very major flaw. I can't figure out how to temporarily disable this program, or turn it off. When you right-click on the tray icon, the options are "open AVG user interface" and "update now." Opening the Interface doesn't show a nice easy way to just turn the blasted thing off for a few minutes, while I'm doing something that AVG hates.

So... while I'm happy to have found a virus protection that actually does its job, without completely choking up my system... I will still be searching for a new one, unless AVG gives me an easy way to temporarily disable it.

I always use AVG and this product is as good as all the rest. Had to reload it a couple of times because I did not delete what I had installed before it. Works great!