AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition review: AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition

Grisoft AVG Antivirus Professional 7.5 Single Edition is a dependable and unobtrusive virus slayer that's a real bargain when compared with market giants McAfee VirusScan 2006 and Norton AntiVirus 2006. For true penny-pinchers, Grisoft offers AVG 7.5 Free Edition, which is a good, if limited, product. And Grisoft's two-year license for the AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition costs less than a single-year license for McAfee VirusScan Plus or Norton Antivirus 2007.

AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition sells for about the same price as Norton or McAfee, except AVG provides a two-year update subscription. It is also available as a 30-day, 31.4 MB trial download from CNET Download.com, and there's also a AVG 7.5 Free Edition, which is an adequate, if limited, product. Unlike Norton Antivirus 2007, AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition runs on Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP, and it's also available in various language-specific editions.

We installed AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition on our Windows XP test system without incident in less than two minutes. Next, AVG's First Run Wizard launched automatically, giving us the option to download the latest virus definitions and program files; create a rescue disk, which boots a disabled Windows 98 or ME system into a DOS environment to remove viruses and restore system files, and scan our computer using either Low Priority (fast) or High Priority (slow) scanning methods. While the rescue disk wizard is easy to use, it creates a rescue floppy disk--not a CD--and that's bad news if you're using one of today's floppy-free PCs. Also, the rescue disk works only with Windows 98 and ME, not the more popular Windows XP

Should you decide to uninstall AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition, the Windows Control Panel Add/Remove Programs process did remove all the folders from our system directory, but we were disappointed to find AVG left several registry entries behind. While better than Norton or McAfee, AVG wasn't as clean an install as Kaspersky.

Within AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition, it's simple to navigate. The basic interface screen provides quick access to AVG's tool set along the left side, allowing you to scan the entire computer or select components, such as a CD or a floppy, with a couple of clicks. The terminology is a bit odd; for example, scans are conducted through the Test Center. For a quick tutorial on how to use the basic interface, see our CNET Download.com's AVG Anti-Virus 7.1 Free Edition feature.

The advanced interface is much more granular. For example, under basic, you can schedule a scan for only once a day; the advanced interface allows for more customization. But the advanced interface is less friendly; taller, narrower, it looks like a directory tree explorer than functional application. By selecting the toolbar choices across the top, however, you can configure Potentially Unwanted Program exceptions, change program settings, or access administrator options.

Performance
AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition scored near the bottom in most of our CNET labs real-world application testing. While performing an AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition scan, it took us 296 seconds to open our iTunes application, and 334 seconds to open Sorenson video compression.. On single-file scans, CA Anti-Virus 2007 came in at 290 seconds (very slow), but its boot time came in at 61 seconds (the second-fastest time). To see how AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition stacks up against the competition see our complete CNET 2007 antivirus performance test scores page.

In terms of protecting your PC, we refer readers to two leading independent antivirus testing organizations. In the latest test results from CheckVir.com, AVG Anti-Virus 7.1 Professional Single Edition--the previous version--was one of six products to earn their Standard (second-highest) rating. And our second source of independent antivirus testing, AV-Comparatives.org, gave AVG Anti-Virus 7.1 Professional Single Edition a Standard rating (third-highest) by blocking 91 percent of the malicious code used in the test.

Grisoft provides AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Professional Single Edition customers with e-mail technical support within the program; this option is unavailable in the free edition. Online, there are searchable FAQs with dozens of useful questions and answers on most topics, and there is also a downloadable 109-page technical manual which, unfortunately, lacks much depth as well as an index. There is no telephone technical support available.

For a little bit more money, we recommend the complete antivirus and antispyware protection found in Kaspersky Anti-Virus, which also offers a free edition under the name AOL Active Virus Shield.