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Bad program name:Grisoft AVG Antivirus Bad program Website: http://free.avg.com | ||||||
| Joe's Opinion | ||||||
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Bad Program - Grisoft AVG Free In the beginning, AVG antivirus was good... Real Good. Small size, resource usage was virtually unnoticeable, caught all the viruses. Better than McAfee. Better than Symantec - Norton. And it didn't slow your computer down. But, over time the "update" files kept getting bigger and bigger. Slow-down of the computer kept getting more pronounced. The final straw was when Grisoft decided that everyone had to stop at the Microsoft Cashier and pay more money to Bill Gates for his newest crap (XP-SP2 or Vista) or you could no longer use AVG antivirus. Windows 98 users were left hanging out to dry. Only those folks who had bought Windows XP and further upgraded to Service Pack 2 (or Vista) would be served by Grisoft AVG. (If they are only going to support Micro$oft's latest software, and not earlier platforms, why are they even an independent company? They are just a subdivision of Micro$oft, in practice). So, I thought I'd use AVG on my Win XP computers and find something else for my Win 98 computers. Installed AVG on my XP and I was immediately reminded of why I won't have Symantec-Norton or McAfee on my computers. The latest incarnations of AVG Free are resource hogs and slow the computer W-A-Y down. We tend to buy the computers with the super fast CPU's so that our computer will operate at lightning speed. What's the point though if AVG is mucking around in there and slowing it down so much it looks like we're running Windows 3.1 on a 25 Megahertz CPU? So then I tried Clamwin. Clamwin is how AVG was in the beginning. Small install size, low resource usage, works in Windows 98 (and XP and Vista), and free! But. . . Scratch Clamwin. It's okay, but apparently does not actively scan for viruses while you're opening files. For awhile I was using NOD32. NOD32 Worked great, with low resource-use, like the original Win98 version of AVG, and Clamwin. But, unlike Clamwin's extreme passivity, NOD32 actively looks at any file I'm opening or downloading and warns me if it is a virus (or potential virus). Unfortunately NOD32 is not free. After the demo runs out NOD32 will still work but you won't get any further updates. It is probably worth the money if you wanted to purchase it. I'm not the paying kind though, so I don't use NOD32 anymore. October 2010 I now have no solution for an antivirus for Windows 98. But none is really needed now. The current crop of virus writers only know of Windows 98 as the Ancient Operating System that their Grandpa used. This means that, for the most part, when running without an antivirus program installed, Windows 98 may be safer to use than XP, Vista, or Windows 7. I run Windows 98 all the time now without any antivirus program whatsoever. The only infection I have ever had in the last six years was when running Windows XP. (I run a dual-boot hard drive with Win98 on the first partition, and WinXP on the second partition). October 2011 Joe's current antivirus recommendations:
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