AVG Antivirus v8.0 Free Edition Available Today
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2286328,00.asp
The newly announced AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0 adds fully integrated spyware protection for speedier scanning and also checks all links in search results using AVG's LinkScanner technology.
by Neil J. Rubenking
AVG Technologies on Wednesday announced AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0, a new version with significant new features. This version adds fully integrated spyware protection for speedier scanning and also checks all links in search results using AVG's LinkScanner technology. The product will be available for download from Free.AVG.com starting on Thursday, April 24.
"With the release of AVG Free 8.0, we are underscoring our belief that all computer users, regardless of their computer usage needs, have the right to a safe and worry-free computing experience," said Karl Obluk, CTO of AVG Technologies.
AVG's antivirus technology, the strongest element of the company's AVG Security Suite 8, got the VB100% award in Virus Bulletin's last three tests, and ICSA Labs certifies it for virus detection. West Coast Labs goes further, giving it checkmark certification for both virus detection and cleaning, plus another checkmark for Trojan horse detection. European lab AV-Comparatives gave it their top rating for on-demand virus removal; it didn't rate as high in tests of behavior-based detection. AV-Test of Germany rated it very good at spyware detection, good at virus detection, and merely satisfactory at cleaning up what it detected. The suite turned in decent scores in PC Magazine's own tests of its ability to clean up malware and prevent it from attacking a clean system.
The free edition's antivirus and antispyware scans are now fully integrated. According to Managing Director Rick Carlson this makes the scan process many times faster. He also noted that AVG Free has a deserved reputation for being light on resources, and went on to point out that you don't have to give AVG anything in return for downloading the free edition—not even your e-mail address.
AVG purchased Exploit Prevention Labs last year, acquiring its LinkScanner technology. New in this version, AVG Free includes a light version of LinkScanner. Each time you make a search at Google, MSN, or Yahoo! it will check every link and flag any that are dangerous. Unlike SiteAdvisor, which runs weeks-long tests to rate Web sites, LinkScanner works in real time. If hackers have infiltrated an innocent site and added malicious exploit code, LinkScanner will catch the problem right away.
PC Magazine hasn't specifically tested the free version, so we can't yet report how it compares to free competitor avast! antivirus 4.8 Home Edition. We'll have a review for you as soon as we finish evaluating the product.