MARCH 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 63from the company’s flagship product, AVG Ultimate,
and lacks a number of Ultimate’s less crucial features.
For example, you don’t get AVG’s PC tune up package
or third-party desktop software updater. That’s hardly
a loss, though, as you can find free programs to dump
cached folders taking up too much space or monitor
software updates. The important security features are
all included in the security suite, however, including
antivirus, firewall, and phishing protection.
Unlike Avast, AVG opted not to include a password
manager as part of its various security packages.
Instead, you have to fork over extra to make that a
part of your security set-up. That’s not a bad price,
though for a few bucks more you can get an annual
subscription to LastPass.
When you first open up AVG, it offers a similar
aesthetic to its corporate counterpart Avast. The app
largely has a grey background with bright green to
highlight important information. You’ll first see a status
dashboard that lets you know which AVG security
features are active.
This dashboard is not intuitive, though. Almost
nothing is clickable in the main part of the screen. To
tweak most options, you have to click on the Menu
hamburger icon at the top right of the window. There
you can get into the nitty-gritty of the application’s
settings, including general options, controls for
ransomwareprotection,a datasafe(encrypted
folders),and a file shredder feature that overwrites
deleted data to make it harder to recover.
Overall, the settings could be better organized
and made clearer. Most of the key settings you’ll