AVG Free Edition 8.0.100 Reviewed - Upgrade Now
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If you are like me and use AVG freebie edition, than there is a new version in town, and it’s good. Real good. I asked my buddy Denny to try it as well and this is what he emailed me back:
AVG-8 I LIKE IT and there are Lots of Improvements and Still doesn’t Use Very Much System Resources to Run
I have it on my XP-BOX and my VISTA BOX. Did most of my Testing on the Vista
It only took about 4 min. to download VIA DSL 45megs then Uninstalled OLD AVG ANTI-VIRUS AND ANTI-SPYWARE
Installed AVG-8 and everything was Automatic up and running Then did some Lookin Under The Hood — TOOLS then ADVANCED-SETTINGS
Here you can MODIFY the way AVG-8 works for You.
This New AVG works more in the Back Ground Than 7.5 did and I like the New BALLOON TRY NOTIFICATION Fetcher
1st Scan Vista Ultimate Full Scan 837,000 files 2hr. 15min. it found 137 warnings All Tracking-Cookies I put them in Virus Vault ..
From Here you can Delete them . , What Was Surprising is that None of my other Tools Worked Finding These Critters !
I did another Scan Saturday on the Vista and CLEAN AS A WHISTLE ..
I also had my E-Mail running and 3 IE-7 Windows open While it was running the scan and AVG-8 was Only Using 15,000k
My experience is similar to what Denny found. The new interface for AVG 8 is slick and sleek and a vast improvement over AVG 7.5. But their is more to this new software than just a pretty face. AVG 8 now contains anti-spyware software plus search protection that tells you in real time if a site is safe or not. Of course you still get a great anti-virus program as well.
There are plenty of tweaks available as well. So us tweak nuts can get this puppy humming the way we want. The only problem I had with the software is one I noted in a previous article here. Once that minor issue was resolved, all was well.
Outside of slow scanning, it takes a good 2 hours, everything else is great. I highly recommend that you give AVG 8 a try. I believe you will find it an asset to the protection of your system and resource friendly. 
Comments welcome.
AVG 8 Free Edition can be downloaded from here.
Note: The notice in AVG 7.5 seeking users to upgrade to version 8 is not for the free version.
2 Comments
Don Naphen
April 28th, 2008
at 7:58am
I like it too Ron! When I first saw the ver. 8 available a few days ago (not here), it just lead me to the PAID version. Thanks to you, I now have the 8.0 free version. Took a few minutes to uninstall the older 7.5 ver., but it was worth it. I also uninstalled the Lavasoft Adaware crappola program. THAT took some doing, as it just didn’t wanna go away. My trusty JV16 did take care of the orphan threads that lingered however, and everything is up and running fine! LOL
Observation: whenever one wishes to do a scan, BE SURE and go to the setup section of scan, as it does NOT remember ones last choice, and will attempt to scan EVERYTHING that’s hooked up to the pc (i.e. external hard drives, etc.). Other than that, the program is well worth the d/load and has many features not found in the older 7.5 version.
I don’t particularly like the YAHOO task bar, but it’s part of the package, and by defeating it, one loses the site tracking feature, so no big deal, and it doesn’t use any additional resources. Just the price one pays for a freebie!
Thanks for the heads up and link Ron !! Oh, a complete scan of my “C” drive just took about a half an hour.
Ron Schenone
April 28th, 2008
at 8:17am
Hi Don,
Thanks for the heads up. I think us pack rats [Denny and I] must have a lot of crap on our systems, which could explain the slow scans. I also believe that your new system is a dual-core which I am sure helps also.
Regards, Ron
PS I scanned this morning and now it’s down to 1 hour 15 minutes. Maybe it gets faster with age!