(Created on 2004-02-05. Updated 2004-02-05)
So a friend brings to my attention the Antivirus Software Best Buy Reviews. Which sounds interesting. But their page on AVG is so wrong. This has so many wrong statements I felt I had to rebut it on the web. It should be noted that this review is dated August 2002. Which is buried deep in the fine print. Click Grisoft AVG FREE Edition to visit AVG.
Fellow MVPs have stated that reviews of other products are inaccurate too.
Tony Toews
Their commentary on AVG Antivirus (free version)
Note. Should this be changed I have the page saved as a PDF file.
Cons - AVG Antivirus:
Comes
only with a basic (automated) interface without the possibility to adjust any
settings
Wrong. Look at their own screen shot. There are lots of
settings you can change. Pretty much the same as McAfee.
Doesn't check for double infected files
Wrong. It detects MyDoom just fine.
Some users have had freezes and other
major stability issues on Windows 2000 and XP
Gotta love anecdotal stories.
Slows down your computer considerably
Rubbish. As a programmer with 25 years experience in computers I
notice these kinds of things. AVG is just fine.
Inserts ads in your email messages.
A one liner stating something along the lines of "scanned by AVG". Which can be
turned off.
You need to use DOS commands for some
advanced operations.
Never had to use DOS commands with this utility. So I'll give them this one.
Log file displays limited info
Quite possible so I'll give them this one.
You can't see anything in systray, so
you don't know if it's running or not
Gee, I can see the yellow, black, red and green square right now.
Major flaws - AVG Antivirus:
Terrible virus detection rate
Wrong. It's caught every virus I've seen in my email within a day or so of it
coming out. And I get several hundred per day.
Doesn't update their virus definition
files very often (monthly intervals, should be twice a week)
Wrong. Updates are at least weekly. When MyDoom hit there was an update that
afternoon.
Deletes infected files without warning.
This is especially bad if the file didn't contain a virus after all (a false
positive).
Moves them to it's antivirus vault.
Very low on scripts, backdoors and
trojans.
No idea on this one so I'll give them this one. Although their track record on
comments above is terrible so I don't believe them.
Tony Toews
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