Most of us have used AVG's free antivirus package, and the same engine underpins the company's full security suite. The suite also includes a firewall, email integration and anti-spam, plus extras such as rootkit detection and IM protection.

Those are good things to have, but considering the basic malware component can be had for free it doesn't seem like great value.

Our malware detection tests only strengthened that impression. A score of just 80% left AVG near the bottom of the class, missing Trojans, diallers, backdoors and more.

When we probed the test PC with our network scanner, we found five potential vulnerabilities and six open TCP ports - more than any other package. We were less than impressed by the firewall too, which was unnecessarily con-fusing to configure and intrusive once we'd done so.

We were also turned off by the way the program's browser tool bar includes a Yahoo! search box which can't be closed - and by the way ‘page not found' errors are, by default, redirected to another page with a Yahoo! search field. We might excuse that sort of shilling in a free program, but not in a paid-for suite.

AVG's trump card is web-based detection. Clearly the company's acquisition of Exploit Protection Labs and its LinkScanner package at the end of 2007 is paying off. By combining URL blacklists with real-time detection, AVG achieved a 74% success rate with dodgy websites - streets ahead of any competition.

If your prime concern is web-based threats, it might make sense to invest in AVG Internet Security, since the browser protection module isn't included in the free edition. But for all-round peace of mind we'd go with a more balanced package such as Avira.