2012 Antivirus Software Reviews

AVG Anti-Virus Software 2012

AVG Anti-Virus 2012 presents a nice antivirus software package this year. AVG is best known for their solid, free antivirus software.

And with their paid antivirus, you some extra perks that may make upgrading to the paid version a good option for a lot of people.

While AVG did well in independent testing, there are a few issues that dropped its score in our testing.

For one, their real-time protection is mostly solid, but we had instances where one scareware-style virus slipped through and where some well-known viruses were extremely difficult or impossible to remove. Not a good sign.

We also found their user interface to be less than efficient. There are too many clicks needed to get where you want to go.

Support is limited, and you'll need to pay for any issues that you can't resolve on your own.

On the plus side, AVG does have a long reputation for good, basic antivirus protection. On top of that, it also offers parental controls, which is a rarity for a non-Internet Security suite version.

Ultimately, it's worth exploring, especially if you're a fan of AVG.
AVG Anti-Virus 2012 scored relatively well among the major testing labs. However, there were some concerning issues discovered by other independent testing. AVG received certificates and passing scores from:

• VB Bulletin
• AV Comparatives
• Anti-Malware Test Lab
• PC Security Labs
• WestCoast Labs
• Malware Research Group
• AV-Test
• ICSA

AVG received generally high scores on everything from real-time antivirus protection to deep virus and spyware scanning. AVG didn't do as well as some of the other top antivirus software this year, but they earned certifications from more big labs than most anyone else.

One of the problems we discovered was in AVG's real-time protection. In one case, an obvious, well-known scareware program slipped passed AVG's real-time shield and completely locked up the testing computer.

Sure, nothing is 100% effective 100% of the time, but AVG missed this and a few obvious threats during testing.

Another issue with is how the scanning section is split. There are options to run a "Whole Computer scan" as well as an "Anti-Rootkit" scan.

Why not simply scan for rootkits as part of the "Whole computer scan"? Does this mean you need to scan twice? Clearly, this part of the interface breeds confusion.
Resource usage for AVG Anti-Virus 2012 was low to average with random, irregular peaks.

CPU usage when running idle was well below 1% for the most part, but was prone to irregular, random spikes that seemed unrelated to what we were doing on the test PCs. Browse several pages back to back, nothing. Sit idle reading one for a moment, and the CPU would leap up and just as quickly drop down.

During a full-system manual scan, AVG was both fast and didn't drag the system down too much in the process. CPU was at 38% while Memory was only at around 66%.
At first glance, the user interface for AVG Anti-Virus 2012 is slick and modern-looking. The design is concise with clearly defined graphics.

On close inspection, the navigation is more awkward than it should be. For instance, the navigation starts with the "Overview" panel open. Ok so far. Then you click which section in that panel you want to go to. "Anti-Virus" for instance.

After you've finished making selections in the Anti-Virus section, you're forced to click the "Overview" tab again just to re-open your full options. There's no next or back buttons. No basic listing of the sections on the left. This makes it take twice as long to navigate within software than needed. They took a nice, compact design then missed the boat.

There's an "advanced" window for more detailed control, but the average user will just get lost here with so many selections to choose from.

Overall, the user interface for AVG Anti-Virus almost gets it right, but lacks simple navigation aids that would make everything better.
There are some decent self-help options for AVG's technical support mixed with some premium support options. For free options, AVG offers the usual suspects: FAQs, forum, chat, and limited phone support.

However, AVG makes it very clear that their "free" phone support is only guidance for self-help. In other words, you can call them, but they're just going to point you back to their self-help support options.

If you need more help like with virus removal or custom antivirus software set-up, AVG's paid, premium support is your only option. You can either pay a one-time fee of $49.99, or a year's worth of support starting at $199. Compare this to the approach Avira and VIPRE take where every aspect of support is free, and it's downright expensive.

On top of that, the FAQ pages were neither easy enough to search nor very extensive. The chat and forums are useful, but without 100% free phone support, we can't give AVG high marks in the technical support department.
AVG Anti-Virus 2012 is set to automatically download and install updates as they become available. However, there's no option in the user interface that give us any indication or control over how or when these virus definition updates are set to occur.

Is it every 5 min? Every hour? Every day? We simply don't know. AVG doesn't tell us. Even in the "advanced" settings there's no clear indication.

While we can see that the updates have been installed after the fact, we don't like being so blind as to how often AVG is checking for virus updates.
AVG Anti-Virus 2012 offers a few notable extra features, but few of them are free. There are Parental Controls, but you need to pay extra for coverage. There's a handy PC Analyzer to clean up your PC, but it's not free either.

AVG Anti-Virus 2012 offers Parental Controls, but it isn't free. It's $19.99 and goes up from there depending on how many devices you want to cover.

The standard parental control features are all offered: PC scheduling, web monitoring, activity reports, social network monitoring, etc. AVG also offers these parental controls for mobile devices like tablets and phones.

The PC Analyzer scans your system for registry errors, junk files, fragmentation, and broken shortcuts.

This is a nice feature, but again, it will cost you. AVG offers a free trial, but it would be nice if they simply included these features at no extra charge rather than constantly trying to up-sell you.

AVG has earned a strong reputation with their free antivirus software. It's adequate for a lot of people. With this paid version of AVG Anti-Virus 2012, AVG delivers a few things that make the upgrade worthwhile but still not always on par with its compeitors.

Technical support is lacking overall, and requires a fee to solve any serious issues you may have. The user interface is so close to being right but misses the boat thanks to missing navigation.

Independent labs gave AVG high score and certificates for basic antivirus protection, and we agree. But we also noted instances where our extended testing showed weakness in AVG's real-time protection. Most notably, common scareware that locked up one of our test computers.

By letting through know threats, AVG isn't as bullet-proof as we'd like to see. Of course, better antiphishing, and a firewall would greatly improve any antivirus software, but that's why most companies, AVG included, have an Internet Security Suite.