AVG as anti virus software - any good?

It's probably not as good as a commercial program, but it's free after all, and surely much better than nothing.

I've been using AVG for the last 2 years and have never had any problems with it (which is a LOT more that I can say of rnorton's or McAffee's!). It doesn't have all the pretty screens of the commercial packages and no on-line database that you can search through for virus info but it works just fine.

Use multiple free security programs to maximize safety.
I read somewhere that the top free antivirus programs have a detection rate within a couple percentage points of that of the best commercial programs. But you can level the playing field by using multiple free security programs.

I have 6 free security programs normally running (2 anti-virus, 3 anti-spyware, 1 anti-Trojan) with no problems/conflicts or noticeable slowdown (I have a **** load of ram though, which is really cheap now btw). When I need top system performance and I know there is no security threat, I disable all the programs. You can read about these and some other excellent free programs at http://techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm .

Linux is the best anti-virus program available on the market today, but if you must use windows, it has been my experience, that a combination of utilities MUST be used, as 1 antivirus program will sniff out things that another won't. Personally . I'm not too crazy about norton and even less so about make-a-fee.. Panda seemed to perform well for me while in the bondage of micro$oft, and trend micro pcillin works well.. Many of the free utilities are okay ie. avg, avast, etc. The best , in my opinion, being antivir, german engineered. Take your pick of all available, and use panda online virus scan AND trend micro online virus scan. both utilities have found gremlins that the other did not. Windows me, and xp are virus havens due in part to the system restore feature, where a lot of nastiness takes place, because that part of the system is protected... It's not accessible unless running in safe mode, which is the reason virus authors target that part of the system.. The antivirus programs detect the virus, but can't do anything about it, because the program can't get at the inaccessible file(s) that are infected.

Do you get new defs as quickly as with the commercial programs?

Last time I benchmarked some AV (back around 2000 or so), their defs were 48 hours later than Norton's.

I'd received the virus in question 2 times on the test box by the time their defs were ready.

I get signature updates every day or two from them but I think there is still a slight lag. I haven't looked at eaxct release dates and which viruses are covered under each to see for sure.

It hasn't been a problem for me since I don't poke around on many sites that are known for viruses any more. Since I stay away from porn, game and cracking sites I don't pickup many viruses at all so if there is a slight delay it doesn't bother me much.

Well over 80% of the virus infections I've seen were from email. I can't actually remember ever seeing an infection come from a site in recent years (the only non-email one I remember was a case of a port scan revealing a windows exploit that was used to load an ftp server to load the virus).

Since I get several thousand emails a day now (due to owning several dozen websites) any lag is critical for me because I usually find out about new viruses and variants by actually receiving them in an email.

Ive been using AVG for a year or two, and always found it to be good at detecting viruses but it has never been able to get rid of them. I normally resort to rebooting into safe mode and running norton, which then removes them.

However a week ago I switched to Avast!, the home version of this is now available free of charge. I ran this after first installing and it found 16 pieces of malware and trojans that nither AVG or Norton had found....and it removed them easily without needing to go to safe mode.

Ive not been using it long, but so far im impressed!

Why do you use Norton and AVG? Is the Norton running an expired definitions set?