AVG introduced their latest AVG 8.0 on February 27, 2008 with a set of new improved features. Dr. Safemode is pleased to bring you the review for AVG’s latest security solution, AVG Internet Security 8.0. AVG was founded since 1991 and has been providing computer security solutions to home and business users. AVG made a global impact when they started offering free anti-virus solution for home users. To date, AVG Anti-virus is the most popular software on Download.com.

Product Info

AVG Internet Security 8.0
Price: $54.99
License: 1 year subscription for 1 computer

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Try AVG Internet Security 8.0 for 30 days

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Product Features

• Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Anti-rootkit, Anti-spam, Webshield, Firewall
• Instant messenger protection.
• Browse the web safely with LinkScanner
• View processes, network connections, autostart, browser extention, lsp viewer

Installation

I downloaded the AVG Internet Security 8.0 trial version here. The file avg_iswt_stf_all_8_81a1271.exe is about 59.1mb. I selected custom installation to look at what are the components going to be installed.

Next it asked whether you want to install the new AVG Security Toolbar which has AVG’s latest feature - LinkScanner. It is a trend nowadays for virus creators to hack a legal website and distribute the malware through the drive-by-download method. LinkScanner is a very useful tool that is able to protect you from drive-by-downloads when you visit unsuspecting malicious website that downloads a trojan without your knowledge. We recommend you to install this feature.

Installation went smoothly. After the installation, you will be presented with a configuration Wizard to guide you through a few steps.

1. AVG Task and Scan Schedule - set the time for automatic scanning.
2. Do you want to report to AVG if your AVG detected a site exploit?
3. Do you want to set Yahoo as your search provider?
4. Perform AVG update.
5. Set basic firewall configuration.
6. Scan for known application for network usage.

Program User Interface

As you can see below, AVG’s security components are arranged in an orderly manner. However, when you double-click on AVG icon sitting in the taskbar tray, AVG did not instantly showed the active components. It presented with a white space first followed by all the active components a second later.

On the bottom left corner, we liked how the way this Statistic(last scan,last update) is easily available without navigating through different section like other anti-virus softwares did.

There is no settings to be made for Anti-virus, Anti-spyware and Anti-spam. In the Firewall section, you can select the appropriate profiles, enable and disable firewall, and set-off emergency mode. In the Anti-rookit section, you can initiate a scan for rootkits. Rookit is a special malware that hides its activity presence from the operating system - almost perfectly.

Performance

Memory:

AVG Internet Security took a whopping 83mb of RAM. I’m rather speechless.

Scanning speed:

Average speed. I did a scan on my download folder containing 4gb worth of installers, it took 59 minutes 44 seconds to finish scanning 118259 objects.

Scan History:

I like this feature, it allows you to look back at previous scanned results and perform a disinfection at anytime.

CPU usage:

When the on-demand scan is running, it takes an average of 60-70% of the cpu usage and a peak of 94%.

Updates

They have very fast download server. Updates are not so frequent.

AV-Test test

You can view here how AVG 8.0 scores in malware detection compared to other anti-virus programs.

AV-Comparatives

You can view here how AVG 7.5 scores in malware detection compared to other anti-virus programs.

AVG Security Toolbar - LinkScanner

LinkScanner did blocked me from further accessing a malicious website. You can even try an online version of LinkScanner here. AVG LinkScanner consist of two components, AVG Active Surf-Shield and AVG Search-Shield. The AVG Surf-Shield protect you when you visit a website while AVG Seach-Shield provides pre-alert on search results. As you can see, there’s a tick beside the search result, telling the user that it is safe to click. Furthermore, LinkScanner does its scan on the spot meaning it is not based on old scanned results.

Conclusion

I can’t conclude on its detection performance but based on the tests done by independent parties, AVG detection is quite on-par with the rest of the anti-virus softwares. Overall, AVG is good since it has added LinkScanner to block most of the web threats but bad on the memory side - using quite alot of memory resource. But, it is after all an all-in-one security suite.