AVG9 Anti-Virus Software

It's hard to believe that AVG has been around for 18 years. In that time, they've built a solid reputation by offering quality anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions, including one of the most popular free security tools, AVG Free Edition, which they claim has been downloaded by 80 million users.

So what's new in AVG Version 9? For starters, it scans a hard drive for malware up to 50 per cent faster than previous versions. This is a major improvement because scanning a large drive can easily take over an hour. Other improvements include a more streamlined user interface, although looking "under the hood" to see what AVG is doing remains a geeky exercise that most users will skip. The thing just works and that's all most of us wish to know.

Indpendent tests indicate that AVG 9 does report some "false positives" - warnings of threats when there really are none - in some well-known programs and occasionally in image files. All security software makes such mistakes, and it's better to err on the side of caution than to let a true threat get past.

AVG's LinkScanner technology, included in the free version, detects and warns you of potential phishing Web sites before you actually fetch their pages into your Web browser. This can prevent the automatic downloading of malware to your computer, and help you steer clear of sites that collect personal information for unauthorized purposes. Some people have complained that the link scanner slows down their web surfing, so if you notice a lag when searching or loading pages, there's an option to turn this feature off.

The free version of AVG also includes email scanning to protect you against dangerous links and executable attachments in your email messages. Of course, anti-virus and anti-spyware protection are also in the free edition. And all versions of AVG 9 include basic