AVG 2011 has just been released

keonichavez

@The Grandmaster: it's the top result in Google for the string "CNet + avg 2011". Let me know if you find it.

fiddiwebb

Here............

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20017800-12.html

aliEnRIK

keonichavez wrote: »

Hi everyone, this is Keoni Chavez, Junior Community Manager with AVG. I'd like to mention CNet's review of our new 2011 product, as a counterpoint; I'd provide a link, but as a new user to this forum I'm barred from doing so. A quick search for "CNet" + "AVG 2011" will turn it right up.

As with most things, your personal experience is the deciding factor, and I won't argue against that, but I do urge those who are undecided to download our free product and try it for yourself. You will find the download link directly from AVG's front page.

Thank you for your consideration, and I'm always willing to hear feedback!

Respectfully,
Keoni

Ill reserve judgement on the 2011 version of AVG, but based on previous efforts ~
Spyware/adaware control was rubbish
Firewall was bad
Link scanner made loads of computers run slow and was pretty much useless anyways
AVG has never had a particularly high rate of detection compared to the others
Uninstalling ALWAYS left bits behind (Main reason why im loathe to try again), even after running the poor AVG REMOVAL program
AVG is generally regarded as a resource hog and most people feel it speeds up their computers once properly removed and one of the 'big 3' has been installed in place of it
I recall one time it flagged up a part of windows operating system as a virus (Not good)

Trinitrotoluene

Hi Keoni,

I do wonder if you will reply to this but it is worth a go. I have a number of points that I'd like to raise as you suggested. Some are in regards to AVG 2011, some in regards to AVG in general.

My experience with AVG is over a large amount of my companies clients who have all paid for AVG so in my reviews and questions I am not referring to the free version, I am referring to the paid version. My employer is an AVG Gold Reseller.

1) Why is AVG so bad at detecting new viruses? You could have an entire back catalog of millions of old trojans but that is rather irrelevant when the majority that are actually going to hit users are brand new, rapidly spreading trojans or rootkits. To test this, for every single one of my clients that got infected with a virus/spyware I forwarded the infection method to myself and placed them in two secure VM's, one with MSE and one with AVG. Some were leveraging an exploit in Java, some an exploit in flash and some were just bog standard exe files. MSE caught 9 out of the 10 different viruses I threw at it and AVG detected 2 out of the 10. As I am responsible for the support of many small businesses this is my primary concern at the moment.

2) Why is the AVG setup executable over 140 meg! This is really inexcusable and in some cases is over 1400% larger than some of your competitors.

3) Why does the on access scanner sometimes completely ignore threats until they install, run, embed themselves in the system.

4) Why do my servers constantly need rebooting? AVG seems to be the only antivirus that cannot perform a small program update without rebooting. Can you understand how difficult it is as an IT support company when I have 110 servers to monitor and AVG decides that it needs a reboot every two weeks to tell my clients that they are going to have downtime simply because their antivirus needs updating? The same goes for client workstations - also neither the servers or the workstations report to the AVG Admin console - I have had to write my own script that monitors the AVG folder to determine if it needs a reboot or not.

5) Your Remote Administration Console is well and good if you are on a single LAN, but I am not and I have 110 servers on completely seperate networks to monitor. To monitor AVG I have had to write my own scripts that rely on parsing AVG text logs so I can get a status back and that works sketchily at best. As you have no API functions or any way that I can interface with AVG at all (nor any documentation telling me how I can check basic things remotely like that AVG is working properly)

6) Why is the exchange plugin for AVG so bad? Infact it is not even bad - it is terrible. Let me tell you a little story about a few encounters I've had with it in the last few months. When AVG 8.5 was globally on all our systems and AVG 9 had just been released we had the exchange component installed on all our servers (correctly configured). We started to see a disturbing amount of viruses coming in via mail over a long period (at certain points we were seeing hundreds and hundreds at certain companies). My team was pulling its hair out trying to figure out why these were not being detected and we finally hit upon the answer in Exchange System Manager. The AVG Kernel version was showing as 8.5.437 / Virus Database 0.0.0/0. Yup - it was scanning all incoming email against NO virus database and subsequently everything was coming through. To further add insult to injury, the component was reporting as active and fine and green within the AVG interface. This effected around 45 of our servers that are completely seperate hardware, networks, and installations. We phoned and contacted your technical support (including our sales manager) multiple times and do you want to know what we were told? Install AVG 9.0 on all our servers. This was something we were not willing to entertain a) Because it had just been released and b) Manpower c) Last time we did a major AVG update 7.5 to 8.0, 8.0 was filled with bugs including a lovely bug that crashed servers due to a hillariously bad memory leak. We we're quite rightly outraged. Continuing forward with the AVG for exchange plugin, we have had a number of servers recently (9.0) that have just simply decided to disable their own email scanning completely on their own. I daren't contact support as I fear they will tell me to install AVG 2011

6) At last count I counted 14 seperate components in the AVG interface. All these components confuse users and they are simply not necessary. Anti-virus should quite clearly have anti-spyware and anti-rootkit components embedded in them - they should not be seperate. On the topic of components, do you understand how annoying it is to have to download the full setup just so I can remove a component. Wouldn't be an issue if the setup wasn't 140 meg!!!

7) I see the installation has shortened for 2011 but has support for silent installations improved? I would have very much like to have tailored a one stop shop script for all of my clients that would install AVG silently but this was not possible as I couldn't pass basic parameters like Remote Admin Address in the command line switches. Also, please; release an MSI so I don't have to mess about with your own installer and I can go about packaging installs myself.

8) Tech support. We have raised a number of issues with your tech support over the years we have been a gold reseller, and do you know how many of them had satisfactory responses? None. Your helpline is awful as all the engineers are in (Czech Republic?) so people who have no interest in sorting even a slightly in depth problem have to raise tickets with the engineers creating and unnecessary level of bureaucracy. Not only this it means that problems can take weeks to solve as we are forced to liase with people who are not technical who have on multiple occasions misrelayed the wrong information as they have misunderstood what we have said. AVG also seem to lack the ability to put things perspective. If I am seeing a problem on 75 seperate servers then "Reinstall AVG" is not what I want to hear when I phone your technical support. I can understand support should be limited if you are on the free product but we are actually paying for this product, so, - please give gold resellers direct access (phone and email) to engineers who can liase in proper English (another issue we have encountered with your cz engineers).

9) In the preliminary tests I ran with AVG 2011, within an hour of playing with it (the server edition on 2008 r2 x64) AVG decided to take up a gig of RAM and hog 93% of all 8 cores on my i7 processor and subsequently brought the server to a halt. On my AVG client workstation I got AVG to detect a virus, removed it, tried to close the dialog box and it crashed.

I understand that the above list is exhaustive but it is only really tipping at the iceberg and we have had many more problems that I have not listed. Back at release 7.5 AVG was awesome and was by far one of the best, if not the best antivirus on the market for its price range but with every subsequent release, I feel you are pushing yourself away from your paying clients. You are making AVG difficult, almost impossible to use as an antivirus solution for a business and you are making my life as a support engineer ever more increasingly difficult.

If you wish to contact me then please PM me and I will email you our business name and reseller ID. Sorry for the wall of text everyone!

aliEnRIK

haha

I think Keoni is going to seriously regret posting on this thread

aliEnRIK

Trinitrotoluene wrote: »

My employer is an AVG Gold Reseller.

Mate - I genuinely feel sorry for you!
Whereabouts in the NW are you? (Im preston based)

fiddiwebb

Keoni seems to have been posting all over the web, nothing like a good plug I supppose.

As to asking for feedback, would it not have been sensible to ask for feedback/views on AVG before releasing the 2011 version?

The_Grandmaster

Better now than never I guess...

milesoneill

I think I've had enough of AVG. Used it for years and years, but it's finally beginning to get to me. It's way too "clunky". I want my security to be discreet, running in the background watching out for threats. AVG has got more vocal, popping up where I don't want it (latest update installed a Firefox add-on, giving me a "security bar" toolbar, complete with yahoo! search etc.etc. - no option during update to ask if I actually wanted this!!). There are too many components, opening the security centre gives blocks of various scanning modules, all of which should run under one security mode. Link scanner is a pain, do I really trust green tick marks after links? Do I want my searches slowed while it checks links? No.
Time to shop around, might try Avira (anyone vouch for this?)
Miles.

The_Grandmaster

Quite a lot of us here use the free avira with malwarebytes. Or can exchange avira with avast or MSE.