AVG Free 8.0

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.