AVG Anti-Virus 2012 - till 7PM EST Friday 2-17-2012 (today) -- $3.95

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

AVG Anti-Virus 2012 - includes 1-PC, 1-Year license - $3.95
http://giveaway.downloadcrew.com/

I am still using Avira free, but I did get upset with how they handled some stuff last year (toolbar, Uniblue). AVG is supposed to be pretty good, so this is tempting.  I generally avoid suites, preferring to piece together my own security system, so this might be good.

Shalom,
Steven

[rgdot]

Tempting for sure, thanks 

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

I read up on Wilders, where every program gets its share of complaints, and I see this as a nice offer. You say no to the $6 download insurance and have a nice $17 AV product (single PC) for $4. Note that the order includes items that may have little interest to most semi-techies :  

AVG PC Tuneup 2012includes 1-PC, 1-Year license
AVG LiveKive 2012 [25GB]includes 25GB storage & a one year license
AVG Family Safety 2012includes a 3-PC, 1-year license

There is a question as to whether you should omit anything in the install process, or whether everything has good toggle turn-off after install. That was unclear from Wilders.

For the $4 cost, with my AV in uncertainty, and with a total of 4 puters bopping around, this is a nice offer.  The famous Triple-A (AVG, Avira,Avast) of German (?) anti-virus is virtually impossible to unravel today, you simply have to use and test.  Of course there are other major players, Eset, Kaspersky, Panda, etc.

Shalom,
Steven

[Innuendo]

In my opinion, out of your Triple-A players, you made the right choice. Avast is a mess. It has pretty good detection rates, but causes a lot of compatibility issues with other programs. Avira, while also having good detection rates, errs too far on the side of safety & on some systems really throws up a lot of false positives.

AVG, in my experience, has detection rates just as good as Avast without the silly compatibility issues. It may not be in the elite class of Kaspersky, Eset, or Agnitum, but dang...it's only $4! That's 90% off the regular price of $39.99. Unless you trawl the seedy underbelly of the internet, it'll be enough protection for nearly most people. With you having 4 PCs, at that price you can buy a license for everyone and not feel bad there's no volume discount for doing so.

As for what to turn off, that's up to you. Everyone uses their computer differently so what might be a "must turn this the heck off NOW!!!!" feature might be a "must keep this enabled at all costs!" feature for someone else. When I test out security software I make sure everything on my system is configured so as to not get in its way, turn on all the features of the new program, and let 'er go. After a few days of using my PC I'll then revisit the program's options and see if anything needs to be tweaked or dialed back if it is needlessly sapping computing performance compared to the benefits it is providing.

Short version: You stepped up from Avira free to AVG paid. You're going to get nearly as good (if not as good) detection rates with fewer false positives. You're also going to enjoy a lot more frequent signature updates (always a good thing!).

[mrainey]

Avast is a mess. It has pretty good detection rates, but causes a lot of compatibility issues with other programs.

I've used avast! for six or seven years with no major complaints.  What specific problems have you seen?

[Innuendo]

I've used avast! for six or seven years with no major complaints.  What specific problems have you seen?

The issue that sticks out in my mind the most is a couple/few years ago there was a huge conflict with NewsBin Pro, a usenet downloader. If you didn't add the download directory to the exclusions in Avast all your downloads would either not ever get written to disk or if they did they'd be corrupted. No other AV program caused such an issue.

I want to say Avast eventually got that fixed. There's been other cases of problems like that, but this is the one I remember most clearly.