Hello,
FWIW - AVG still has a Free version. The message you received was for version 7.1, which Grisoft stopped supporting on February 18th, 2007. The new version is 7.5 and it works even better.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

Hope this helps.

Hi Ron,

Thank you for letting me know! It’s too bad though - what’s done is done, and while I had a good run with AVG, let this be a marketing lesson for us all. People out there are BUSY and DISTRACTED. Next time you craft your marketing message, think about the end recipient. Are they going to “get it?” Will they take the time to investigate further? You’ve got to be crystal-clear, up-front. I’m a marketing person, not a technology whiz. Maybe if I were the latter, I’d have “picked up on the fact” that AVG FREE wasn’t abandoning me, but I didn’t. My bad? Maybe? But possibly their bad as well.

Thanks again for taking the time to post here and set me straight on this!

Dina

Hello,

As your fellow Lockergnome blogger Ron Scherone noted, Grisoft has just stopped supporting the older version of AVG you had installed. A newer version has been released which is still free for personal (individual) use.

Other companies which offer anti-virus programs free for personal use include:

Alwil Software - Avast! Antivirus
Avira (formerly H+BEDV) - Avira AntiVirus
ClamAV - Clam AntiVirus
Grisoft - AVG

Clam is actually distributed under the GPL and is free for anyone to use, however, it lacks some of the features other anti-virus programs have, such as on-access scanning.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Gee Dina - not just an alarmist but an uninformed drama queen? AVG just upgraded their software and they still provide the new one for free. I too waited until the last minute to upgrade mine but I already knew you could still get it free because I upgraded my son’s a month ago when that pop up started showing up.

AVG all the way!

The link you provided for the new free version for AVG 7.5 is good but it is still not free you can download AVG 7.5 but you can not update it or receive any updates beyond 7.5.
I’m going to try this new Anti-Virus Dina recommended and i hope it is good as she says. thanx Dina

Aryeh,

Thanks for the links to the additional antivirus programs. I appreciate the information.

Dave, I wasn’t knocking AVG at all. I told you, we had a good run. I was trying to tell this story from the end user perspective - to illustrate “what could happen” and likely does happen when upgrades happen to busy people who may not be paying attention when they should. I was trying to poke fun at MYSELF, not at AVG. And the FACT, like it or not, is that I now have a new antivirus running on my machine.

Tamer- thank you for clarifying. This rings a bell in my head. The fact that “you can’t update it or receive updates beyond 7.5″ is probably why I switched to the new antivirus provider in the first place.

You can call me uninformed or a drama queen, but the fact is, I’m a typical “user of technology” and if you are a marketer of technology maybe you can take something valuable from this story and use it to sell more product.

That’s the best I can give you. Good luck!

Dina

For years I used security software on my machines. First I had Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security as a all-in-one security software but with the years they pressed more and more (useless) features in and it became slower and slower. Last week I tried to install Trend Internet Security 2007 on my old notebook Pentium 3 1.5 GHz 512MB Ram. That was a mistake! System slowed down and crashed. Now I switched back to avg.
On another Athlon64 machine I used Zone Alarm pro in combination with ESET Nod32 and Webroot Spysweeper. Webroot brought several upgrades and with each of them the system became slower and less stable. So I decided to kick out spysweeper and turn on the antispy in zonealarm. Not have been very lucky with that setup…

Now I bought a new core 2 duo machine with vista and thought about security software. I decided to do it without a personal firewall, antivirus, antispyware but decided to setup a virtual machine. With the new CPUs it’s a pleasure to work with such a setup as it doesn’t slow down your PC in any respect.
I will never install security software again (at least as long as manufacturers do build crappy functions in it). The Virtual machine setup really gives you peace of mind and do not fake security or slow your system.

AVG is a good program, free or not. Personally I use Computer Associates myself and have for years but it’s really what ever “you” are comfortable with. A few years back I spent a lot of time and money auditioning av apps and AVG and Computer Associates were the winners basically. Computer Associates had a beta AV app at the time BEFORE they were eTrust or Computer Associates it was back when CA first decided to get into the home software market.

That experience started a love affair that has lasted ever since and I have NEVER been bitten that I know of. Nuff said.

John Belanger

Antivir is not free for home business. It is only free for home personal use, not commercial use.