I’ve been using AVG Free for about a year now and it’s saved my ass plenty of times. I love it and recommend it to everyone.

Previously I used Trend Micro’s PC-cillin (which u gotta pay for) and, at the time I was happy using it, but recently I went back to using it while visiting my parents on my uni break. I found it to be overly bloated and restricting my web experience. Not to mention the constant virus updates (over 12 months worth) that now take up over 350mb of space on the computer!!! Whats the deal with that? When you download the latest version of the software do u also need to download 350mb of virus updates? No sir-ee. On average you might need to download 5mb – 15mb virus update definition files. So basically most of these updates contain redundant data.

Ok I’ll stop bashing Trend and give them some credit. Their free tools HouseCall, CWShredder and their Anti-Spyware for the Web , can help you when your in a real bind (when you’re already infected and you haven’t been updating your virus scanner regularly and somehow your own virus scanner has become compromised)

But generally I don’t need those tools now. I’ve got AVG Free and i’m happy, safe and it’s not filling up my hard drive with too much redundant data. (maybe a little, i’m too lazy and happy with the way it is to bother checking)

AVG Free doesn’t have Firewall software (Thank God), Spyware Protection or detailed virus definitions.

But it does update regularly, quickly & automatically, has some good scheduling options, email scanning and doesn’t consume a large amount of memory.

In my opinion, the features you lose in the free edition aren’t worth paying for and those features aren’t as good as other free software on the internet anyway. (SpyBot, AdAware)

All in all i’m a happy camper and it’s cost me $0 (which is what it should cost) to protect my computer from viruses.

Follow the links to download the free version for either Windows or Linux:

Download the Windows Version Here
Download the Linux Version Here