Products

• AVG offers a variety of anti-virus and security software for a range of customers. Its basic desktop protection products are geared toward individuals and businesses with Windows 2000 and beyond or Linux operating systems. These are available free for personal use or can be purchased for commercial use. AVG also offers Internet security solutions for a variety of servers also operating on Windows and Linux. These features are suitable for both web servers and email networks.
  
  

Features

• AVG specializes in the basic features of anti-virus, anti-spyware and security software. The company offers the ability to initiate system scans or schedule periodic analysis. It also protects email users from malicious viruses or software. When a problem file is located, AVG allows a user to repair the damaged areas of the system and contain the virus within a "vault," which essentially acts as a quarantine option.
  
  

History

• AVG was released in 1992 by Grisoft, in the Czech Republic. The company changed its brand to AVG in 1997 when it moved into the German and United Kingdom markets. The following year, the software was introduced to the American market. As its market expanded, Grisoft introduced software packages in addition to its original anti-virus, including anti-spyware programs. In 2007, the company purchased Exploit Prevention labs and adopted its LinkScanner technology. This was followed two years later with the acquisition of Sana Security and its identity theft software features.
  
  

Considerations

• Compared to many rival companies' software, AVG uses relatively limited amounts of resources. As of 2009, the operation of its base programs, AVG Anti-Virus 8.5 and AVG Internet Security, requires only 256 megabytes of RAM. However, earlier versions are available that use as low as 16 megabytes of RAM and only 20 megabytes of space on the disk drive.
  
  

Warning

• One of the major challenges with the products of AVG is the lack of compatibility with other anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Other companies' systems, such as Norton Anti-Virus, will not install as long as AVG is functioning. In addition, periodic system errors occur with upgrades. One example of this was the November 9, 2008 update. AVG mistakenly identified a major Windows component, "user32.dll" as a trojan horse and caused all users who removed the file to suffer from constant system reboots.