Autumn is an eventful time of year. Leaves fall off trees, it starts getting dark at half past four, and utility companies suddenly discover that they need to put gas prices up due to wholesale increases (despite the fact that previous wholesale decreases earlier in the year didn't really see rates go down). Oh, and anti-virus companies release a host of refreshed security suites. In fact, there are probably as many of these as leaves on the ground or freezing cold pensioners wrapping up in triple layers of cardigans.

AVG is a company most famous for its free anti-virus software, but it offers a far more thorough level of protection and functionality with its paid offerings. Internet Security 2011 comes loaded with exactly the sort of diverse security measures you'd expect, with an anti-virus scanner, firewall, anti-spam measures, identity protection and a toolbar for your web browser to keep your surfing safer.

After installation the firewall neatly sorts itself out, making decisions on trusted applications automatically, and all of them (in our tests) good calls. If it isn't sure about something, it'll ask for approval to allow a program to connect to the Internet. Then it's onwards and upwards to the first scan, which is an optimisation scan. This is where the suite susses out your hard drive and determines which files can be glossed over in the future, to cut scanning times. Our first scan took 1 hour and 12 minutes including the optimisation time, and the second fully optimised scan we ran took just 19 minutes.

Norton, which we ran over our 150GB hard disk before installing AVG, took 1 hour and 3 minutes in comparison. Inside 20 minutes is an extremely nippy time for a full scan, and in terms of the results, it uncovered a problem which Norton missed (a corrupt system DLL, not a virus as such). Norton did pick up 50 tracking cookies which AVG didn't bother with, but that's a matter of judgement as strictly speaking those cookies were bottom level threats which weren't worth worrying about much.

Heading to the web browser, AVG installs its own toolbar, complete with its own search box, and built-in monitors for webmail (which can be linked to your Hotmail or Gmail account, to let you know when a message has arrived). The suite has an in-line site checking system with major search engines such as Google and Bing, which lets the user know a site is safe by placing a big green tick next to it.

Again, comparing it to Norton's web filtering, there were a couple of sites the Symantec program earmarked as suspect to which AVG gave a green tick. While this is something of a matter of security opinion, naturally, Norton certainly blocked a few more sites than AVG, which means that the former is either slightly more stringent, or over-cautious. AVG also sports a surf shield which is designed to prevent a user from being unwittingly infected via drive-by downloads. The suite also ties up with Facebook, providing a link scanner to check over links on the social networking site.

AVG Internet Security 2011 also comes with shields for common Instant Messaging programs, providing a thorough level of online protection all round. There are some neat touches of detail, too, such as the game mode being automatically enabled when a full screen application is fired up. The suite also uses intelligent scanning, meaning it will speed up even more if you're not at the PC while a virus scan is running, cutting back on the resources used when it detects other activity on the computer.

Rounding the package off is a PC analysis tool, which scans your system in a minute or so, and reports any issues with regard to junk files, registry errors and hard disk fragmentation. These can then be fixed by downloading AVG PC TuneUp, which is usable once for free (after that first run, you'll need to fork out). It's a basic affair, and rather oddly, this utility uncovered a lot more registry errors than a sweep with the recently reviewed System Mechanic did. Eight times as many in fact, indicating that it's perhaps a tad over-keen there, and we decided not to let it loose on our registry.

Company: AVG

Contact: 0845 890 3300

Tags: antivirus avg (software) internet security personal computer norton internet security malware security norton