Update on July 27, 2007: AVG now offers two products for free; AVG Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware 7.5. They are still high quality products, recommended by many users here at PCMechanic, including myself. You can find them on http://free.grisoft.com/

For this week’s Freeware Frenzy, I will be examining Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition Version 7.0.338, the latest build as of 8/17/05. Grisoft makes numerous protection programs for servers, networks, PCs and email clients. The costs vary, along with the capabilities you receive.

When I first loaded AVG, I was asked to update definitions, create a rescue disk and scan my system. AVG also added a desktop icon, system tray icon, and Program list entry. The system scan was thorough to say the least. I have only 38GB in use on my 80GB hard drive. AVG took 22minutes to scan approximately 60,000 files on my machine.

When it was finished, AVG told me that only three of the six infected files were “healed”. It then presented me with a summary of the test results, including the three files that had eluded capture. Of course, I was interested in these files. Luckily I can look up information about these files using AVG. These files contained a description, but the description was a generic few lines:
“Simple viruses, which attack diskette BOOT sectors and the MBR of hard disks. Virus body is trivially encoded and at its end the visible text. Contains unpleasant destructive action – formats the beginning of C: drive.”
But then I couldn’t heal the files!? Strange indeed. I was however, able to move these three files to the “Virus Vault”. Examining the Virus Vault, you can find Information, Wipe, Heal, Restore and Refresh. I chose to wipe all of my files. You can also edit the size of the Vault and set up when and how many files to auto-delete.

The test scheduler works perfectly, I set my time to scan each day and AVG scans unobtrusively in the background. I wasn’t even sure it was running until I noticed a second system tray icon labeled “Complete Test. In the Free Edition, you are allowed only one Complete Test scan per day. Without Professional, you cannot customize tests or setup multiple tests. 
Moving on to the Control Center Options I found:

• AVG’s Shell Extension allows me to scan individual files and folders within Explorer by adding a “Scan with AVG Free” option to the right click menu.
• The Residential Shield scans executables and documents when accessed, preventing you from opening a potentially infected file.
• Update Manager tweaks your automatic updates, which default to each day at 9:00AM.
• E-Mail Scanner is self-explanatory, scanning incoming and outgoing e-mail. I use net-based email clients, so this is not of use to me. I did load up Outlook Express to test it, but try as I might, I could never tell if AVG was scanning my incoming or outgoing messages.

AVG offers a few other tweaks, such as custom keyboard shortcuts, a Standard and Reduced View for the Control Center, and of course, a handy link to buying AVG Professional. There are included help files, but I found them lacking in substance, with very basic overviews of AVG’s capabilities.
So after spending an afternoon with AVG Free Edition, I would give it a 6.5/10. AVG receives points for a fair amount of options for a free product, reliable scanning and removal. I knock it down a few for the lack of customization found in Professional, weak help files, slow scanning, and not being able to scan my email.
You can find information on the differences between Free and Professional in this PDF: http://files2.grisoft.cz/softw/70/filedir/presale/mm_pfp_bro_us_20050726.pdf