I’ve been living with AVG Free 8.0 for 24 hours now. I have to confess that my first day impressions are not so good.

First, I’m not all that thrilled that AVG includes an “anti-spyware” component now. I know that Grisoft has had an anti-spyware program, but I have always chosen to use Windows Defender. Now it’s seems that if I want to continue to use Windows Defender I am going to have to double up the load on my system. BTW, Windows Defender is a mandatory part of Windows Vista. So if you use AVG 8.0 with Vista you by default WILL have two programs running, and thus adding more load and reduced speed to your system.

However, even more invasive than the extra spyware scanner is the installation of a browser add-on into Firefox. Now when I do a Google Search I get these green check boxes out to the side of each line.

This is NOT wanted behavior. AVG seems to be doing “pre-scanning” of all the webpage’s I get in a search return.

The feature I liked MOST about AVG was how unobtrusive it was about what it did. It sat in my task bar, scanned each night, and did scans when I looked at files and directories. It scanned my e-mail. These new features have caused me to question if I want to keep AVG on my system at all.

Finally, AVG is much more aggressive about marketing it’s paid version to me. It actually kicks back an “alert” indicating that my system could be Enhancely Protected. Again a major selling point of AVG Free to me and my clients was that AVG Free did not have all of this invasive “enhanced” crap.

I’m going to play around with the install to see if I can remove some of these “features”, but if I cannot, I have to say AVG is coming off my system today. Of course I’ll let everyone know what I move to. I feel betrayed by Grisoft over this.

XP -> Vista -> XP -> Vista -> XP

I had to install a new hard drive in my primary Desktop system today. It’s been a couple of months since my Vista to XP “side grade”, so I deiced to install Vista back on my system, just to give it another look.

Three hours… I had Vista on my system for three hours before I had to go back to XP. I tried so hard, I really did, but in the end the first time I right-clicked on a gigabyte+ file on one of my servers and had to wait for 3 minutes for the menu to come up I knew I could not keep it.

I even stopped missing the Vista start menu, though the Vista Side Bar still seemed to appeal to me, but not enough to make me put up the all the issues I still had on my system.

But even now, composing this message in the safe and warm bosom of XP, I realize what I really want. I want a Mac.

If you think I’m odd because I can’t make up my mind of what OS to use, you should see me at Baskin-Robbins…

Many of you have been calling or emailing me about the new version 8.0 of AVG.

AVG does this once or twice a year where it will ask you to “upgrade”. During this upgrade AVG will take the opportunity to try and up sell you to a paid version of their product. This is a question of conscious. In my opinion, AVG makes a fine anti-virus product, however, if you are going to PAY for an anti-virus product there are better ones on the market. AVG does allow you to continue to use their free version, and if you read each screen in the “upgrade” process carefully you will see links to the free version.

However to short cut all of this I have put a copy of AVG Free up on the TaborCG website under the “Software” section.

If you like, you can download it from there and install it on your system. The installation is straight forward, read each screen and click “next”. The only two things I would suggest are to select “Standard Install” (which is default), and to uncheck the box when it asks you is you want to install the AVG Toolbar (because adding extra toolbars is just dumb).

After the install, the software will ask you some configuration questions. I recommend you set the daily scan to happen at 2:00am, and that you NOT register the software. Everything else, just leave as default.

The install will overwrite AVG Free 7.5 automatically and after the restart you’ll have the new version.

The Look and Feel of AVG 8.0 is different than AVG 7.5, I have to say I kind of like it.