Is AVG sufficient to protect laptop when using it for mainly playing games?

M

Mrs. Doyle

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Hi All,

We use the free version of AVG and spydoctor to protect our laptop but the hard drive has gone on a number of occasions and been replaced by the supplier under the extended warranty. They say that the free versions of AVG and others are not sufficient to cover the use of games and their updates and that we need to buy something better. Can anyone confirm if this is the case and if so what should we buy? We have tried Norton and McAfee many years ago and weren't particularly impressed with them.

Thanks for any advice in advance.
 
I find a combination of Microsoft Security Essentials and Spybot does the job, both free. Used to be a fan of AVG Free but MSE scores better these days and is more unobtrusive. I find the paid anti-virus programs to be unwieldy and slow.

And yes, just in a way that a vested interest will tell you house prices always go up, vendors will tell you only to trust paid-for anti-virus programs.
 
Mrs. Doyle said:
Hi All,
They say that the free versions of AVG and others are not sufficient to cover the use of games and their updates and that we need to buy something better.

They would say that because they make deals with specific anti-virus companies when they bundle their initially "free" software along with the hardware sale. Believe me this is just scaremongering on their part due to their vested interests and it's just B.S! AVG free has never let me down in the last 10 years or so and my kids download even more stuff than me and that's saying something! Install the latest version (9 dot something) from filehippo.com or wherever, update immediately, and then configure for automatic updates for the future. It now has anti-spyware along with the free version so it's a real no-brainer and no need to buy anything. Happy surfing
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canicemcavoy said:
I find a combination of Microsoft Security Essentials and Spybot does the job, both free. Used to be a fan of AVG Free but MSE scores better these days and is more unobtrusive. I find the paid anti-virus programs to be unwieldy and slow.

And yes, just in a way that a vested interest will tell you house prices always go up, vendors will tell you only to trust paid-for anti-virus programs.
Click to expand...

+1

Depends on your operating system. When I was on XP, I felt I needed a lot more protection software. Now that I use Windows 7 I find Microsoft Security Essentials to be all I need. I now rely on Windows firewall. In almost a year I have had zero problems.
 
On a games machine in particular, I wouldn't install an anti-virus product and simply be careful with online browsing when I am using it for such.

Some anti-virus products, particularly ones that stay resident and do on-the fly checking can have a high memory footprint and suck the life blood out of your system performance.

This has been my philosophy on my games based and my office laptop for 5 years now and I have never had a problem.
 
Hello,

I would go along with everyone who has praised AVG ... I've been using it for a long time now and find it great. Another handy program is Malwarebytes Anti - malware ... it tends to pick up any crumbs. Yet another goodie for the odd sweep is Piriform CCleaner (I'll leave to your imagination what the initial 'c' stands for :p) ... both are free downloads.

If you want to be REALLY safe you can enable the Guest account and only browse the web while logged on as Guest ... that way any potential nasties will have limited permissions, because that's all that the Guest account allows.
 
dtlyn said:
On a games machine in particular, I wouldn't install an anti-virus product and simply be careful with online browsing when I am using it for such.

Some anti-virus products, particularly ones that stay resident and do on-the fly checking can have a high memory footprint and suck the life blood out of your system performance.

This has been my philosophy on my games based and my office laptop for 5 years now and I have never had a problem.
Click to expand...

MSE uses a grand total of 4K so it's really not going to affect anyone ;)
 
canicemcavoy said:
MSE uses a grand total of 4K so it's really not going to affect anyone ;)
Click to expand...

I would be surprised if that was the case. Even if it were the case MSE will still intercept disk reads and writes for sniffing, adding overhead and reducing overall system performance.
 
+1 for AVG free also and we browse the web quite a bit. We had a paid norton programme before AVG and it really slowed down our laptop.
 
dtlyn said:
I would be surprised if that was the case. Even if it were the case MSE will still intercept disk reads and writes for sniffing, adding overhead and reducing overall system performance.
Click to expand...

I'd be very surprised, but I may run a benchmark later on just to check.
 
canicemcavoy said:
I'd be very surprised, but I may run a benchmark later on just to check.
Click to expand...

If you can find an anti-virus program that stays resident with on-demand scanning at zero processing cost and 4k memory footprint I'd be amazed and happily corrected.
 
There's a good guide to various free AV, firewalls and anti-spyware programs .

Another vote for AVG Free from me.
 
I gave up on AVG free about a year ago after using it successfully for about 5 years. No security issues at all but I just found that increasingly, it was a drain on the processor. Using Avast now and find it a lot easier on the system - no other problems with it either.
 
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