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AVG Internet Security 8.0, 1 Year Protection - One User (PC) | 
 enlarge | From: AVG Technologies Ltd.
Category: Software
List Price: £39.99
Buy New: £25.47
You Save: £14.52 (36%)
New (2) from £25.47
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 563
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp, Windows 2000
Media: CD-ROM
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 8590555261657
ASIN: B0012UZNSQ
Release Date: March 12, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Official AVG UK Dealers - Brand New Sealed UK Version
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Not for the power user July 1, 2008
Although the installation was trouble-free, configuring AVG Internet Security is not as straightforward as it should be, and is hindered by a lack of documentation (or poorly written documentation). The firewall configuration wizard needs a little help if you have installed applications on a Windows drive other than the C: drive. It only seems to know how to scan directories, and doesn't seem to interrogate the Windows registry to learn about installed applications, which makes the configuration process a little slow if you have a lot of large games or multimedia files on your computer.
AVG seemed to want me to configure two firewall profiles, one for a standalone computer and one for a small home network ... the 'Help' button in the configuration wizard didn't work for me, so I was left in the dark as to how the different profiles were going to work, and how the 'Select automatic profile' feature was actually going to operate.
Once the configuration wizard finished, I immediately received a pop-up window saying 'a new or unassigned network was detected', but with no details of what this network could be, I had no idea as to which firewall profile the network should be assigned to, or what name I should assign to it. This I thought was rather poor.
AVG requires registration at their website to enable the product beyond an initial 30-day period, even though you have bought a valid license. The product seems to work smoothly and hasn't noticeably affected the speed of my PC, although emails are downloading a lot slower now from my mail server. The user interface is clean but a little over-fussy, suggesting there are more configurable features and functionality in the product than there really are. The AVG toolbar wants to slap a Yahoo! search bar on my browser even though I specifically asked that the Yahoo! search bar is not installed.
Although AVG have won a number of awards for their products, I am yet to be convinced that this product is as intuitive and useful as the sales literature would have me believe. I have found the configuration process to be poorly documented, the user interface over-engineered and basic features such as viewing firewall logs not in obvious places. Rather than making me feel secure, I am left feeling a little like the product is making decisions without informing me or without my full control over it. Perhaps AVG is good for users who don't want to know what their firewall is doing for them and who can trust blindly, but for a power user like myself I am left unsatisfied that it does not provide the depth of information that I would like to see.
 Very good June 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Easy to install (and I am USELESS with such things) and I am so pleased with it, I also bought it for my dad and my brother.
 Speed not too bad June 26, 2008
Having had bad experience of Zonealarm internet suite's ridiculous slow speed, I needed something faster. On this front, AVG Internet Security 8 certain is faster. No more freezing up just because of a background scan.
The user interface lets it down slightly, as it is not as intuitive as zonealarm. You definitely need to read the manual if you want to get the most out of it.
The software can block outgoing internet connections as well as block incoming. However, I've yet to figure out if I can finely control specific port access. Like I said, it's not obvious how it's done, or whether it can be done, I will have to look it up in the manual.
Hassle free anti-virus at last! June 26, 2008
Before I start I'll just point out that I think anti-virus software is a very individual purchase (more so than most things). A lot depends on how powerful your PC is, what other software you run, and whether you're technically minded, or, like me, prefer to leave that to the geek in the family. Just because one person loves the software doesn't mean it will work for you, on your PC.
That said, so far I love this software! I've got a fairly old laptop (at least 3 years old), that's nearly died on me several times already. Norton (which I was using) was hopeless - on a bad day it would take more than five minutes to boot the PC, and if Norton started running a scan, you might as well give up and come back the next day. I'd read that AVG might run better on a less powerful PC, so I decided to give it a try.
Installation - it took (probably) less than ten minutes to install, and I just followed the instructions on screen - nothing to it. I was brave (stupid?) and opted for the custom install, but it wasn't too technical. It did ask a couple of questions about the type of network the PC was on, but allowed me to install more than one option (as a laptop, sometimes my PC's connected to a network, sometimes it's not). So you could just select them all and work it out later...!
Scanning for viruses - I then left it about four hours to run a full system scan. When I came back it had found and quarantined a virus Norton had missed, and several adware/spyware files that Spybot hadn't found (rather to my surprise, as I thought Spybot was normally pretty good).
Updates - it updates automatically in the background (as did Norton). The difference is, AVG seems to update a lot more often. Norton only seemed to update about once a day, and sometimes there was a new anti-virus file only once every two or three days. AVG seems to download various components regularly, sometimes within a few hours of the last download. Although I monitor it (mostly for the purposes of writing a review!) I've not noticed any impact on the PC's performance, even when I'm downloading something else from the internet at the same time, or playing a game. Norton updates used to slow my PC to crawling speed.
General performance - it does pop-up each time a file/piece of software tries to access the internet, and asks you whether to allow it or not. Some of the files I recognise, some I don't. You can select to allow access just once, or allow access permanently, or not at all. That didn't bother me - as I became more familiar with most of the ones that came up, I allowed most of them permanently. It also tags websites you visit as to how safe they are, but again, I didn't notice any reduced performance (mind you, after using Norton, a snail might have seemed fast by my standards...!). I didn't install the Yahoo search/toolbar option (I'm quite happy to pick my own search engine, thanks). No issues with conflicts with any other software that I use (I know the latest McAffee software is reported to conflict with Spybot, which is why I didn't try it). No strange errors, and it hasn't caused any problems when I shut the PC down (Norton used to fail to close down properly on a regular basis).
I think the main thing with anti-virus software is that you need some - it doesn't really matter what you use, most of the mainstream options will do the job. It comes down to what works for you, on your PC. But if you're running an elderly laptop that can't cope with Norton, I'd give this a try (I should add here that I've used Norton very successfully on a powerful desktop PC, and I am still using it - but AVG was the solution that was right for my laptop). You can get the important parts of this software free by downloading it from AVG's website. So if it doesn't work for you, you don't need pay to upgrade to the full version (in fact, you may not even need the full version - so this is certainly an option worth considering if you're operating your PC on a limited budget).
I've given it four stars because I've only been using it a few weeks, and I still can't quite believe there won't be a catch somewhere...if I'm still this happy with it when I renew the licence in a year, then I'll come back and give it five stars!!
 awful June 26, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Absolutely awful. Poor interface. conflicts with skype. No onboard help and tech support take 2 weeks to respond to a query. I uninstalled within 24 hours.
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