Anti-Virus 8.0 Free

Of all the free antivirus packages you can download (and there are a few), AVG Anti-Virus Free has to be the doyen of the lot.

And for good reason — it is a pretty good AV package, not the very best perhaps but pretty good. The release of the free version of the current edition of AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 came a couple of months after the commercial version.

As before, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 is based on the same core AV technology as the retail version but minus a few bells and whistles, so it is to all intents and purposes the same as the retail product. Which makes it a pretty good AV choice, even ignoring the great price tag.

So what don't you get for your no money? Well, no support for a start, though the support offered by AVG Technologies for paid editions is limited to online only, so maybe this is no great loss.

AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.0 is just an AV product and not an Internet security bundle so you won't find a firewall or antispam module, though, as before, the package integrates with your email client to stop mail-borne malware.

However, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 does include the new LinkScanner feature, this marks dodgy sites returned by a search engine hunt.

Finally, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 only updates once and not four times daily. You can download AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition from free.grisoft.com.