GriSoft AVG Antivirus - part II

by Andrew Cooper

Antivirus Itself

Test contains a set of files, drives, folders and e-mail storages you might want to check. It also has settings for you to use, such as the method of curing infected files, the location of the quarantine folder and so on. It would be great to be able to group tests logically into subfolders, to have one folder for e-mail tests for example, and another for network drive tests, but the software lacks this functionality. Running a test does not take much system resources, but sometimes it feels that AVG is longer to load than other AV scanners like NOD32 or McAfee Viruscan. I experienced several lock ups and my system froze a few times when the scanner was checking large files.

After experimenting with the antivirus capabilities, I finally went to the Control Center for an overview of AVG and to get a more detailed impression of this AV software and its functionality.

I must say that AVG's Control Center lives up to its name. It is a tool that gives you a complete overview of AVG's features and settings.



The screen is divided into frames, each with a descriptive caption that is colored blue indicating everything is okay or red to instantly alert you that something requires your attention. This lets you easily spot problems with either AVG itself or with your system. For example, when the Update frame is red, you have to update the virus lists, while a red Registration frame reminds you to update your license and so on. Each feature has its own Settings dialog that contains all its feature-related settings and lets you fine-tune them.



The final two features I'd like to highlight are the Rescue Disk Wizard that lets you create a bootable diskette to use in emergencies to boot and clean your system if a virus prevents your system from a normal startup and the Virus Vault, a method AVG uses to keep infected files it cannot clean in quarantine. All files in the Vault are locked so other applications cannot access them. This prevents viruses from spreading through your system and from using your machine as a bridgehead to infect other computers or networks.

Verdict



AVG is a decent antivirus application, but with an interface that's a little kinky. It has good functionality and manageability, but lacks usability and could eventually overload your system with occasional high resource usage. It's not recommended for users that dislike complex interfaces.

Developer's web site: http://www.grisoft.com
Download link: http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl7.php/

Back to Part I