ITWire

AVG’s Anti-Virus Free 8.0 is a smooth looking program, gaining a welcome facelift from AVG Free 7.5, and integrating what were two potentially confusing screens – the test centre and the control centre – into a single windowed interface.

Installing AVG Free 8.0 over 7.5 proved effortless – the software notified me that 7.5 would be uninstalled before 8.0 was loaded, and it worked, as advertised, with a minimum of fuss.

International users can download AVG Free 8.0 here while Australians get their own site to download the free version from here, although the Australian site asks you to enter in your name and email address before proceeding to the free download page.

It’s important to note that AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is only available for single computer use for home and non commercial use, so anyone in business should buy one of AVG’s paid editions – which in any case offer more features, benefits and functionality – something that AVG is hoping its free users will want.

After all, it’s hard to make money from a free product, but then that’s exactly what AVG is doing – many people choose to upgrade.

But you don’t have to pay if you don’t want to - you can cobble together you own free security suite using AVG Free 8.0 as the anti-virus and anti-spyware solution, and ZoneAlarm’s free firewall which outdoes the one in both Windows XP and Vista.

Besides a new anti-spyware component within AVG 8.0 Free, there’s also a new LinkScanner. In the free edition of AVG 8.0, only half of the LinkScanner benefit is available, clearly as an enticement to upgrade to a paid AVG product, but seeing as the previous version didn’t have link scanning at all, it’s definitely an improvement.

So, what does LinkScanner do, how does it work, and what is its problem with Firefox 3, even though it claims to work with both Internet Explorer and Firefox? And what is the AVG 8.0 ‘pop up’ that AVG 7.5 users need to know about? I’ve got the screenshot on page 3... please read on.