Scope of Protection:  

AVG Anti-Virus is fully armed to protect your computer from threats from a number of angles. The software includes antivirus and antispyware protection, as well as complete online protection from harmful sites and downloads.

AVG protects from hackers, phishing scams, adware, and malware that comes through email or IM. AVG even scans outbound email to make sure you don’t accidentally pass a virus along to others. And of course the software protects from other forms of malware, including worms, Trojans, and rootkits.

One unique feature from this year’s installment from AVG is the cooperation with Identity Guard to offer identity theft protection. If your personal information is compromised, Identity Guard will help you recover and restore your identity (online and off).

Effectiveness:  

AVG is a perfectly adequate antivirus solution, and is certainly effective. Their detection rates aren’t as impressive as some of the other antivirus software we reviewed, but the software is by no means ineffective. AV Comparatives awarded AVG the Advanced award in their most recent evaluation, and the software managed nearly 95% detection efficiency. The software “overprotected” multiple times, finding 8 false positives.

A recent test from the Virus Bulletin found AVG to be one of the most effective antivirus software for reactive and proactive virus scanning. In their tests AVG clearly outperformed most of the competition, earning the cumulative score of 80.6%

Needless to say, you don’t need to worry about the effectiveness of AVG Anti-Virus.

Ease of Installation:  

AVG Anti-Virus is simple to install and setup, but took a bit longer than we would have liked. After the program is installed, you can pretty much sit back and let it do its business.

AVG provides a number of compelling protective measures and security features, and won’t slow you down. AVG Anti-Virus 2010 is faster than last year, and features relatively fast scanning speeds with fairly consistent performance. However, for those looking for the fastest antivirus, you should know that AVG was one of the slower security solutions tested by AV Comparatives, showing only 6.8MB/sec scanning (compared to 17MB/sec from Norton and Avast).

That said, AVG for the most part is an install-and-forget security solution if you want it to be. You shouldn’t notice any major lag or slowdown from the software, especially if you schedule the intensive scans to run while the system is otherwise idle.