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We’ve now come to the end of our Antivirus Comparison Series.  To finish everything off we’re going to give each software a rating and a rank….

Software	Rating	Rank
		6
		7
		3
		4
		2
		5
		1

From all our investigations over the past few weeks we can conclude in our opinion AVG Internet Security is the best software around!  We were really pleased and excited to see that Avira and Kaspersky have so much potential and are on the verge of being world class products.  Norton 360 and McAfee, for us, were the biggest let downs.  The quality of product and service just isn’t as good as you expect.  In many cases you’re better off going for a smaller brand or AVG!  All software used in the comparisons were the best available home software from the brand at the time of writing.

I think the interesting and most important thing to take from the investigation is that the two biggest household names are rated as last.  Consequently this whole survey really asks this question…’do the big name brands always provide  the best service and product?’

Want to find out more?  Check out the original comparison articles:

• Norton 360 vs AVG Internet Security
• McAfee Total Protection vs AVG Internet Security
• Trend Micro Internet Security Pro vs AVG Internet Security
• Avira Premium Security Suite vs AVG Internet Security
• avast! Professional Edition vs AVG Internet Security
• Kaspersky Internet Security vs AVG Internet Security

Today we’re comparing McAfee’s Total Protection package with AVG’s Award Winning Internet Security Package.  The comparison will involve an overview of each packages features and then at the end we’ll tell you which we think is better through our rating system.  Our ratings are worked out by the amount of ticks the product has.  Further points are awarded for faster download, simpler/better installation and cheaper price.

Feature
Download Time	Average	Fast
Installation	Installation time is long but happens automatically which discards any confusion.  However, unlike AVG you still have to configure all the software features after the installation/setup process.	Takes an average length of time.  Quite extensive and helps you set up the basic features of the software.
Antivirus
Anti-Spyware
Anti-Spam
Anti-Phishing
Firewall
Identity Protection
Web Shield (Browse the web safely)
Link Scanner
Free 24 Hour Support
Anti-Rootkit
Data Backup
Parental Controls
RRP	1 Year: £58.69 (up to 3 PC’s)	1 Year: £48.93 (for 3 computers)
Available to download from Brandstar?
Overal Rating	10/16	14/16

So after playing around with the two programs I can conclude that we think AVG Internet Security is better than McAfee Total Protection.  It has a wider range of tools and equipment to give an overall better performance.  McAfee looks nicer than AVG but we all know looks can be deceiving and AVG turns out to be far easier to use.  A huge advantage of AVG is that you can buy it for 1 computer if you only have 1 computer, whereas you dont have the option to do that with McAfee Total Protection.  Although the installation of AVG involves you having to make some choices it saves you having to do them in the long run and it helps provide you with an even better performance.  Whereas with McAfee you spend ages doing the Automatic installation to find out you still have to configure all the features yourself!!

Next time we will be comparing AVG Internet Security with Kaspersky Internet Security.

Are you finding that emails from some of your contacts are sneaking into your Junk Mail/Spam folder?  Here is a great little tip for those of you who are running AVG 8/8.5 to stop this happening!

1. Open up the AVG Interface (Start –> Programs –> AVG –> AVG User Interface)
2. Click tools and then advanced settings
   
3. Click on the (+) next to Anti-Spam and then Click Settings.  After this click in the box next to ‘add recipients of sent e-mails to whitelist’ to make sure there is a tick in it.  (Click on below image to make it bigger)
   
4. Select Apply and then click OK.

We hope this helps!

You may find that your AVG Anti-Spam isn’t catching some of your SPAM Emails.  There are two different ways to catch SPAM emails.  The below tutorial will show you both ways, starting off with HAM.  HAM training of Anti-Spam teaches AVG what emails you want.  The other method is SPAM training, this teaches AVG which emails you don’t want.  Both methods are pretty straightforward and we highly recommend you teach AVG to do it in both ways.  You may have to do this a few times but AVG catches on pretty quick!

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