open air review

There’s little point reiterating the proliferation of online threats in the modern online world, so instead let’s look at the latest release of a popular remedy. GriSoft has, for many years, provided a free version of its popular anti-virus solution AVG, and it has done so again with the new 7.5 edition.

The free edition, as you’d expect, is a stripped-down version of the Professional version the company sells (and tries to upgrade you to), but the truth is it has enough functionality to serve the majority of home users.

Available, although not easy to find, from the main GriSoft site, once downloaded the software takes you through its simple installation. It also wants to check for the latest updates (and it’s wise to comply), and once in place, part of the program’s daily routine is to download a daily update. This is included in the free version too.

It then moves on to tackling a full system scan, which again it likes to do on a regular basis, and on our test systems (a Core 2-based laptop with a 120GB hard drive, and a Socket 939 Athlon 64 desktop with 80GB drive) the scan took between 25 and 45 minutes.

Available, although not easy to find, from the main GriSoft site, once downloaded the software takes you through its simple installation. It also wants to check for the latest updates (and it’s wise to comply), and once in place, part of the program’s daily routine is to download a daily update. This is included in the free version too.

It then moves on to tackling a full system scan, which again it likes to do on a regular basis, and on our test systems (a Core 2-based laptop with a 120GB hard drive, and a Socket 939 Athlon 64 desktop with 80GB drive) the scan took between 25 and 45 minutes.

It does have quite a system overhead, especially on single core machines, and it’s obvious when a scan is taking place. You can still word-process, browse and e-mail, but we struggled with anything much more demanding. The scan was accurate and correct in picking up problems, though, and we were content with the level of virus protection it offered over a month-long test.

Our only other niggle is that we would have preferred a summation screen that made it clear when problems had been discovered and when the system was clean. A screen is presented, but the information isn’t as transparent as it could be.

On-demand virus scanning isn’t the only tool in the program’s armoury, though, with a Resident Shield that scans files and documents on-the-fly, and a competent e-mail scanner that works with popular mail clients to check your mail on the way into your machine. Again there’s an overhead here, albeit a small one, as the program delays incoming post slightly while it runs its checks.

AVG Free 7.5 is happy to carry on doing its work without intervention, but there’s a friendly Control Center application that glues the constituent parts together. From here you can manually initiate updates and scans, rearrange the program’s schedules and disable parts of its work.

In all, it’s a competent security program (albeit missing some further security elements that would be of use to the standard system), which naturally offers excellent value for money. We’d be perfectly happy recommending it for use on a home system, although for PCs where more sensitive work is being done, it’s worth spending some money, especially given the modest price of the likes of F-Secure, or even the Professional Edition of AVG

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a competent browser with enough features to meet the needs of most users but is difficult to recommend due to on-going security concerns. In the past IE has been a focus for security attacks and there is little to suggest this will change with the release of IE7. Additionally, Microsoft have a poor track record for speedily fixing IE defects and this has left users open to drive-by attacks and other forms of zero-day exploits.

There are several excellent alternatives with the new Mozilla Firefox V2 [1] a solid first choice. It’s safer than IE, so safe in fact that many users have reported no spyware infections since they started using the product. It’s also browses a tad faster than IE, is very stable and is more standards compliant. The program loads slower than IE but once running, it positively zips along. With tabbed browsing and over 2000 free extensions (add-ons) that allow you to customize your experience, it provides most users with a major surfing upgrade. Firefox is now my everyday browser though I still leave IE on my PC for the occasional web site that’s designed around IE’s non-standard features. If you need any further convincing then check out my IE to Firefox migration guide.

An equal first choice is Opera [3]. It’s a speed demon; probably the fastest of all the common browsers. But it’s much more than that; it’s full featured, standards compliant and safe. Just as Firefox is extensible through add-ins, Opera can be enhanced using Widgets, though there are not nearly as many of these available as Firefox extensions. Then again, it doesn’t need as many extensions as a lot of the features added by Firefox add-ins are already available built into the standard Opera browser. There’s just so much to like about Opera V9 that you could easily create a case that it’s better than Firefox. Indeed, if I could get an Opera replacement for some of my key Firefox add-ins, I’d probably switch.

Users who don’t want to drift too far from the Microsoft stable can get some of the feature advantages of Firefox and Opera by using one of the many customized shells for Internet Explorer such as Maxthon [4] and Avant [5]. Their main selling feature for these products used to be tabbed browsing but now that this is available in IE7 it’s hard to create a case for their general recommendation. Still if you need a specialized feature they are worth considering. On the downside these shells share most of the same security problems as IE as they utilize the IE engine.

Last but not least is the K-Meleon browser [6], a slimmed down cousin of Firefox that’s optimized for Windows. Of the four browsers I use regularly on my different PCs, K-Meleon is the quickest loading and along with Opera, the fastest for surfing. On the downside there are only a limited number of add-ons and plug-ins available so you are pretty well limited to the features available in the standard product. If you are the type of person who prefers performance to bells and whistles you should definitely try K-Meleon.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox (5.6MB)
http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
http://www.opera.com (4.6MB)
http://www.maxthon.com/index.htm (1.9MB)
http://www.avantbrowser.com (1.86MB)
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net (6MB)