Friday, March 21, 2008

AVG 8 - Worth the wait? (The wait for the download, that is!)

For whatever reason, downloading AVG's antivirus package seems to take longer than actually installing it. That said, the new version 8.0 seems to have a much friendlier interface, scan faster, and come with more features than ever, even in a basic edition. With these added features, the price has gone up considerably. I'm not sure if it's because it has been so vastly improved, or because their parent company is in the Czech Republic and the US Dollar isn't as valuable as it used to be.

The down side? Well, it seems that in Windows 2000 the firewall component may mudge up web connectivity for applications that need it (like Crossloop). However, since Windows 2000 doesn't come with a firewall, I'd prefer to fight with AVG's clunky firewall interface than have no firewall at all.

The new AVG Administrative interface (AVGAdmin) does an excellent job showing information at a glance, and offers yet more powerful features that 7.5. The most improved part of the AVGAdmin component is the Remote Installation feature. 7.5's was extremely difficult to use. 8's has vastly simplified the process, and seems destined for greatness.

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