As an experienced PC user you almost certainly have an antivirus toolalready, but does it really deliver the features and performance you need? Thereare numerous AV options available, from thre free tools through to commercialeditions from AV developer heavyweights, such as Symantec. So, what does AVGAnti-Virus do differently that enable the software to standout from other apps?

It all starts with a compact antivirus engine that won't swallow all yoursystem resources. Our test PC saw the major AVG Anti-Virus components consumeonly around 4 MB of RAM when running in the background, for instance, and CPUutilisation is also very low, so most of the time you'll never even know theprogram is there.

The efficient approach pays off in scanning performance, with AVG Anti-Virusable to check your entire system at a very reasonable speed. Although if eventhat's not fast enough, you could set up a custom scan that would run much morequickly. The default System Areas Test, for example, checked commonly infectedareas on our test PC in under 5 seconds.

Of course the real aim of AVG Anti-Virus is to prevent you getting infectedin the first place, and so the program's Resident Shield looks for and blocksthreats before they can be launched. It will scan your incoming and outgoingmail, too, and you can also schedule further scans to trap anything that managesto get by.

The latest AVG Anti-Virus 9 is much faster than previous versions, plus shipswith an improved anti-virus scanner and anti-phishing support.