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Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

thesharklady.com

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Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#2
This is an old article. I also removed AVG after seeing this ridiculous behavior, but after updating it on a different machine I realized they had seen the error of their ways and fixed this issue. They have since removed the error sign when the link checker is disable, and as far as I can see remember they now allow (at least custom) installation w/out the link follower at all (as my installation doesn't even have it!).

I do notice issues when AVG does it's weekly scan - the computer runs quite a bit slower - but besides that I've got no problems. I was upset when they released the version with the noted problems, but since they quickly released an update with fixes I'm happy enough to continue to use AVG. Everybody makes mistakes!

Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#5
She boldly declares, "Grisoft just lost a customer, and I'm guessing it won't be the last." It seems an overstatement to call a free AV user a "customer".

Those looking for a free A/V solution should check out Avira, though you'll have to disable the annoying upgrade popup.

Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#6
I too uninstalled it. I have a ridiculous multi-core system with more RAM than anybody really needs; I have been unable to even mildly slow it down since I built it -- until I installed AVG, which slapped ridiculous scan bottlenecks on every disk read, every download, every link click, every application launch, every thing I could do on my box.

It's almost worse than actually having a virus. At least you can uninstall it. Now my machine is back to it's usual, quick self.

Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#8

She boldly declares, "Grisoft just lost a customer, and I'm guessing it won't be the last." It seems an overstatement to call a free AV user a "customer". Those looking for a free A/V solution should check out Avira, though you'll have to disable the annoying upgrade popup.

I think 'customer' is a somewhat fair term. The fact that I use the free version of X makes it more likely that at some point I might buy the non-free version of X if I've built up a level of trust with the company, and/or that I'll recommend the product to others/at my work and they will get more users/corporate bussiness. For example I use DropBox and have almost hit the 2GB free limit. I will definitely upgrade as I really love the service, unless Dropbox do something annoying like AVG have done in this article in which case I'll find a different solution.

Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#9

This is an old article. I also removed AVG after seeing this ridiculous behavior, but after updating it on a different machine I realized they had seen the error of their ways and fixed this issue. They have since removed the error sign when the link checker is disable, and as far as I can see remember they now allow (at least custom) installation w/out the link follower at all (as my installation doesn't even have i…

Thanks for the clarification. I tried AVG some months ago, and I did notice the link checker. I found the idea useful, but it wasn't for me, so I disabled it. I didn't notice a change in the tray icon, so I guess I was using a fixed version.

Re: Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware

#10

This is an old article. I also removed AVG after seeing this ridiculous behavior, but after updating it on a different machine I realized they had seen the error of their ways and fixed this issue. They have since removed the error sign when the link checker is disable, and as far as I can see remember they now allow (at least custom) installation w/out the link follower at all (as my installation doesn't even have i…

Do they still hijack new tabs in Firefox so that they show some crappy search page? Because that was the deal breaker for me.
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