AVG 9.0 security software review

Comments

• AVG 7.x was great. AVG 8.x went down the wrong path of trying to be all things and too nannying. I ditched my paid for version in frustration. I then used safe browsing and had no anti-virus which worked well. In the last week I have installed Microsoft Security Essentials to bring back real-time scanning. It's free and works very well. I see no use for AVG in the market now. Posted by Chris, UK
• This update was my worst experience with any product in over 7 years. I have used AVG for several years on 2 computers and 2 laptops in my household. To get this (supposed) upgrade to work on 1 of the laptops, I had to boot into safe mode and uninstall AVG completely. Now it is trying to optimize not only the laptop, but my external drive backup and the 2 desktops. "Optimization" has now been running over an hour.
  
  I won't go into the thinly veiled attempts to get me to click on the "30-day trial", or to add another toolbar I don't need, or to re-set my browser to Yahoo.
  
  Why is it that good products go crappy after a few years? Probably the influence of some MBA somewhere.
  
  I've already started to look for a replacement. A simple upgrade should not be this difficult unless your name is Microsoft. Posted by David, USA
• David, don't be so hard on AVG. Someone put a lot of work into the download website layout, intervening setup screens and those "veiled attempts". The real question is is version 9 is any good at what it is supposed to do.
  
  Although I do agree that the user should have a say in what gets scanned before the Optimizer starts.
  
  Remember that it is free and you can only wonder what the paying customers have in store for them. Posted by Steve, United States
• I paid for my AVG 9.0 upgrade.
  
  My PC now crashes 4 or 5 times a day.
  
  I also had to re-enter my licence key twice to activate the system.
  
  Crap. Posted by Richard, UK
• It's hard to tell which of AVG's products you're writing about. The free one, the paid AV one that doesn't have a firewall, the paid one that does, or the Internet Security product? They all have different levels of protection. Though all come with LinkScanner. Posted by Craig Kensek, US
• I agree with Chris. My computer would not start up after the upgrade, and would only restart after a System Restore. That gave me back the shortcut to AVG 8.5 but in fact that won't work now. I'll try the suggestion to use Microsoft Security Essentials. Posted by Graham, UK
• Steve, after spending a week trying to solve problems on this families 4 machines (all with versions of XP), I was forced to dump AVG 9. On all 4 machines. It (among other things) corrupted explorer.exe, locked-up on shutdown, blocked Outlook, and interfered with Firefox. In every case, removing AVG 9 solved the problem. I loaded AVG from the web site and 2 full downloads from 2 different sites. More work should have been put into the actual program then "the download website layout, intervening setup screens and those "veiled attempts". The answer to the "real question" is that version 9 is not any good at what it is supposed to do, and that is - let the machine run. We've gone back to Avast. All 4 machines have displayed a significant speedup in booting and shutdown times. Avast also found a malware file that AVG 8.5 missed. Posted by David, USA
• I am in Korea and have wasted a total of 8 hours trying to get my computer I used to teach from back to its normal self. My computer was freezing up and I had to keep rebooting it. I tried to uninstall but there's no feature for it and had to use some other process removers to get one of it processes out of my system.
  Don't waste time on this one. I'm surprised by what the reviewers here and at download,com are saying about this when its evident the users are having a difficult time. Posted by Lee, Korea