AVG is best known for their free antivirus though they have offered for years a full security suite. I had never bothered to try AVG Internet Security (AVG IS), mainly because it is an expensive package in comparison to most of the other offerings on the market. That said, it is a solid product and worth consideration in spite of the cost.

I should start by stating, for the record, that I had a dreadful install experience. AVG IS partially installed itself and then errored out. After a reboot, AVG IS was alive but outdated, and what was broken was the ability to update. Worse, the uninstall was also broken. After getting the uninstall ironed out, I tried to install again and this time everything was much smoother.

AVG IS is organized and clean with a very clear and easy-to-understand overview dashboard. At a glance you can tell what is active and what is not active. Double-clicking on any of the icons in this view gives access to adjustment controls by which the... Read more

I am using AVG INTERNET SECURITY 9.0 for over a month now. But I never bought it. What I did buy was an older AVG security suite (v7.5), 2 years ago. Nevertheless, whenever a later version becomes available, the suite updates itself to the latest version -- FREE! It happened at least three times over these past years, with versions 8.0, 8.5 and recently 9.
You have to respect a company that does this! With AVG a 2 year license means you shall have the latest security suite for 2 years (and not just new database definitions). Can you imagine buying McAfee or Norton 2009 in October and in March been offered their later release, free?

As a security suite, AVG is light and reliable. It does not tax my system resources either idle or actively scanning, and one can trade speed for resources with a scalable slider. The interface is user friendly and intuitive. The default settings will protect the initiate user from confusing alerts and warnings. On the other hand, the... Read more

AVG Internet Security is not compatible with Windows 7 networking features. After many, many iterations with AVG customer support, they were unable to configure the firewall to successfully set up sharing for media files and documents, meaning that you can't play media files from one computer on another or open/copy documents from one computer on another. In the end, I have had to disable the AVG firewall and revert to using the native windows 7 firewall, which works fine. I am an engineer and programmer, and while AVG was quick to respond, they never offered any suggestions that were even close to the mark even after I downloaded their troubleshooting software and uploaded tons of data to them related to the problem.

Update: after I told AVG about this review, they sent me a configuration file that allowed windows 7 networking for media content. However, this was accomplished by enabling access to my media files, photos, and documents to the entire internet. In other... Read more