AVG Technologies is best known for antivirus protection, but in recent years the company has branched out, adding system tune-up, parental control, online backup, and more. But have no fear; you can still get the powerful protection of AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 without spending a penny. In my tests and in tests by independent labs it beats many of its for-pay competition. Do note that it's specifically free for personal use; business users must pay for AVG's antivirus protection.
The 2012 edition's main screen collapses the previous edition's ten component icons down to six, but adds three new ones to integrate the company's other products. If you use AVG Family Safety ($19.95 direct for three licenses, 4.5 stars), AVG PC Tuneup 2011 ($29.99/year direct, 4 stars), or AVG LiveKive online backup, you can click the icon to link your products. If you don't, naturally the antivirus includes an option to get them.
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Specifications
Type
Personal
Free
Yes
OS Compatibility
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7
Tech Support
FAQ, forum, videos, email; free phone support in US, UK, Canada.
More Good Lab Results
All of the labs I follow test AVG's technology and give it generally good ratings. ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs certify it for virus detection; West Coast adds checkmark certification for virus removal as well. In all of the last ten tests by Virus Bulletin, AVG has received VB100 certification.
AVG participates in the on-demand test by AV-Comparatives.org, but not in the retrospective test, which simulates zero-day protection by using old virus signatures. In the on-demand test AVG rated STANDARD, the lowest passing grade.
AV-Comparatives also runs a whole-product dynamic test, challenging products to protect test systems from real-world up-to-the-minute threats. In this test AVG rated ADVANCED, a cut above STANDARD.
The ongoing antivirus certification tests by AV-Test.org are also dynamic tests, emulating a user's real-world experience. Products can receive up to 6 points for protection, repair, and usability, with a total of 11 points required for certification. In the most recent tests under Windows 7, Vista, and XP, AVG averaged 13.17 points.
The article How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests explains how I boil down results from the various labs to create the following chart.
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 lab tests chart
Very Good Malware Cleanup
AVG installed quickly on my twelve malware-infested test systems. Resistant malware on one system interfered with installation, but installing in Safe Mode solved that one. On half of the test systems AVG detected active threats immediately and requested a reboot to finalize cleanup.
A full scan on my standard clean test system took just 16 minutes, and a repeat scan finished in less than two minutes. That's plenty fast. The average scan time for recent products on this same system is 25 minutes.
I always find it odd that AVG separates rootkit scanning from the whole computer scan. For the test systems infested with rootkits I ran the separate rootkit scan, which added about three minutes.
When I tallied the results I was quite impressed. AVG detected 88 percent, the same as TrustPort Antivirus 2012 ($39.95 direct, 3.5 stars). Of the products tested with this current threat collection, only G Data AntiVirus 2012 ($29.95 direct, 3.5 stars), with 91 percent, detected more.
AVG didn’t clean up perfectly. It left behind executable files for some threats, and even left a few processes running. However, its score of 6.5 points for malware removal is a new high for the current crop of antivirus products, beating out the 6.4 point record held by Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free 1.51 (Free, 4 stars).
AVG detected all of the threats that use rootkit technology and scored 6.7 points for rootkit removal, a tie for top score with ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall 2012 ($59.95 direct for three licenses, 3 stars). Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012 ($39.95 direct for three licenses, 4 stars) was the next-best rootkit remover, with 6.0 points.
The majority of current products detected all of my scareware samples. Malwarebytes scored a perfect 10, thoroughly cleaning up scareware. AVG was close behind with 9.5 points, the same as BitDefender, Panda Cloud Anti-Virus 1.5 Free Edition (Free, 3.5 stars), and several others.
This is quite an impressive showing, and it parallels the dynamic test results from the labs. For a full explanation of how I come up with these scores see How We Test Malware Removal.
