Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Free 7.5 review

One of the first anti-virus programs we've seen that supports Windows Vista, AVG is also notable for its free availability.

Home users can download and install this software for nothing and, despite an old-fashioned interface, there is much to like about this program.

If you use Windows 95, 98 or Me, AVG can generate a rescue disk. This is a floppy disk that contains important information about your hard disk and may help restore an infected hard disk. This feature does not work with NTFS-based installations and is not available in Windows XP.

Some of its features, including scheduling, are basic, but upgrading to the Professional version makes more options available. Upgrading costs around £19 for one year.

In contrast to Avast!, the other free scanner here, AVG is accurate in detecting viruses and spyware. Its email virus detection rate is not great, but it beats PC-cillin and Avast!, and it's not far off BitDefender's result. In total, it found 67 per cent of our email viruses and a staggering 49 per cent of the web-based threats. That makes it the most accurate product on test when protecting against spyware and similar programs, just beating its closest rivals Kaspersky Anti-Virus and NOD32. It roundly thrashes expensive products such as Norton AntiVirus and McAfee VirusScan.

Even considering the lacklustre email detection, AVG is better than its free rival Avast! and beats many paid-for options with the notable exceptions of Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Steganos AntiVirus, F-Secure Anti-Virus and NOD32. We would pick one of these four to install on a system but, if you really can't afford them and choose AVG, you can take comfort in the fact that your free software is better than the less accurate and more hardware-demanding offerings you'll find on the high street.

Author: Simon Edwards