I always know when AVG release a new version of their fantastic free anti-virus software as it usually results in a torrent of abuse being launched towards me by my readership – “you said this software was free and now it’s asking me for money or it’ll stop working.”

Now, I must admit that it is true that whenever a new version of AVG is released and an old version is discontinued, they do try and push users down the route of buying the more advanced package. I don’t blame them for this as everybody needs to make money, however those that actually bother reading the message will see that there is still a free option available. It is this version, AVG 8, which I will be reviewing today.

I have always pitched AVG as being the anti-virus checker that my readers should be using and amazingly the best thing about this application ISN’T the fact that it’s free – In actual fact there are plenty of reasons that you would want to use AVG even if you had to pay for it.

My favourite feature of the application is its non intrusive nature; it silently gets on with it – In my opinion there is nothing worse than a virus checker that gets you too involved and prevents you from getting along with the job in hand. Everything is done in the background so you want have to be involved if you rather understandably don’t want to be; it will update itself and even perform full system scans without you ever realising and then, if it finds a virus it will efficiently dispose of it.

Install and forget is a nice philosophy and beats gigantic boated pieces of software such as Norton Internet Security which prompt you every 15 seconds about problems that you wish it would just work out for itself; I’ve never understood a virus scanner which will actually ask me if I want to remove a virus it has found. In my eyes this is a stupid question – why would I voluntarily keep something that is liable to wipe my hard drive and provide me with months of extra unpaid work?

Version 8 improves on the background scanning of the previous AVG application and provides new and quite possibly overdue Spyware protection, along with a handy LinkScanner feature. The latter is a new component which provides you with a quick graphical evaluation of a sites perceived safety before you visit it whenever you do an Internet search in an engine such as Google. It works by taking the findings of those that use the AVG toolbar by warning you via a small graphical link if a site that appears in your search results is likely to be malicious.

Updates are provided free of charge for the life of the product and of course all the usual features such as e-mail scanning and resident shield are provided and turned on by default.

In terms of installation, the application is a 45.6mb download which can be obtained by visiting http://free.grisoft.com – It is worrying to see such the size has growth significantly from AVG 7.5’s 16mb footprint but this is still much smaller than many other virus checkers on the market. After advice given to me by our resident techie who resides upstairs from Refresh at Switch Computer Support, I would recommend removing AVG 7 before installing version 8 as by all accounts the installation program does sometimes simply ‘forget’ to remove the old version first which can cause problems.

I’m still genuinely amazed by the number of my readers who are still using paid for anti-virus programs after I have recommended time and time again a completely free solution. I’m assuming the reasoning is that the public believe that a free version of an application as important as a virus [...]]]>

I’m still genuinely amazed by the number of my readers who are still using paid for anti-virus programs after I have recommended time and time again a completely free solution. I’m assuming the reasoning is that the public believe that a free version of an application as important as a virus checker would be substandard and offer inadequate protection hence why I’m here today to try and change this perception.

I think there’s no better way to change this perception than to ask a home user to look at the typical anti-virus software of choice used by IT professionals. Rather than using the larger commercial applications these people often choose to use products such as AVG and this is for more reasons than simply cost. Many in the industry are very much under whelmed by the quality of many of the larger paid for solutions and without singling out individual products I can assume that this is because as a rule of thumb they are often intrusive, bloated and have the additional downside that you have to pay for them yearly.

For years I have recommended the anti-virus solution AVG and coincidentally they have just released a major new upgrade, version 7.5 which is completely free to download and use from http://free.grisoft.com. The software is fairly small in size (16mb) so shouldn’t take too long to download on even a modest connection and once installed it’ll just sit quietly down in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and will only pop up to bother you when it really needs to.

As you would expect the program continuously run in the background checking for viruses as you work but this isn’t a problem because it is such a small piece of software so doesn’t make a dent on the speed of your machine or resources available to other programs unlike many of the commercial products on the market. The majority of the day to day tasks of the program can be automated so that you don’t have to worry about updating the virus database of performing full system scans as this will all be done for you – In actual fact most of the time you’ll probably just forget it’s there.

A handy feature is that the software seamlessly integrates itself in to your e-mail client and rather than updating you on the progress of scanning each message it works completely transparently – if an infected message is found it is simply moved to the virus vault and you hear no more about it.

In terms of the security it is reassuring to know that the team at AVG release frequent updates to the virus definitions database so that you’re always protected against the latest threats. Recent certifications have been granted to the software by the likes VB100%, ICSA, and West Coast Labs Checkmark which provides additional piece of mind that you are dealing with a dependable product.

You may well be wondering why they go to all this effort to produce this product and then give it away for free especially since it isn’t supported in anyway by intrusive adverts. Alas, this isn’t just out of the kindness of their hearts but in fact there is a more comprehensive commercial version which includes features such as an anti-spam and anti-spyware filter along with an integrated firewall. These are all fairly minor problems as Microsoft provide a firewall in Windows XP by default and Windows Defender is a capable Spyware filter that can be freely downloaded from www.microsoft.com. With regards to anti-spam I did review the free ‘MailWasher’ package only four weeks ago and those that missed that particular week can view a copy at www.computerarticles.co.uk