AVG has recently upgraded their anti virus software to version 8.0. I have personally been using the free AVG personal edition on all my computers for at least 5+ years and have recommended to anyone who asks. The previous version was extremely light and unobtrusive and I have never had any issues with it. I was a little hesitant to install the most recent version as I have heard of some users’ complain that it slowed down their computer. It would appear that AVG has followed in the path of McAfee and Norton in adding in the kitchen sink of unneeded extras. Bloated software is probably my biggest pet peeve.

After some research, I decided to give it a try and so far it has been running fairly well. Yes it is more bloated than previous versions however, I haven’t noticed any obvious slowdown to my computer. A few things to note is that I did not do the default installation and purposely disabled some features that have been known to cause some issues:

Download from the AVG site and not Download.com

From sitepoint.com forum post: I found something a little odd with AVG 8 (at least this was the case last weekend). If you download from AVG directly (rather than using Download.com) then during installation you are able to deselect the ‘feature’ of Search Shield which checks each website for malware after searching on Google/Yahoo/Live/etc. This slows down your browsing experience and is annoying.

How to install AVG without LinkScannerIf you wish to install AVG 8.0 Free Edition without the LinkScanner component, or uninstall this component from your program, please proceed as follows:

Download the AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation package from our website.
* Run the installation with the parameters /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch. One way to achieve this is to:

• save the AVG Free installation file directly to disk C:\
• open menu Start -> Run
• type c:\avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

* The installation will be started, and AVG will be installed without the LinkScanner component.

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