For years, I’ve used the free version of AVG AntiVirus on my personal computer. I have also recommended (i.e. sold for them) their paid version for about the same amount of time to business clients - not for commission (never received a dime from ‘em), but because I thought their product had value.

But I’m about finished with that now.

For years in their freeware app, they have defaulted their email scanner to send unnecessary and blatantly promotional “signatures” at the bottom of every email message, something anyone who operates a mailing list server can’t help but despise. And in their last version (8.0) they added a constant advertisement for their commercial products at the bottom of their main window, which is difficult to obscure and impossible to permently close. But I grit my teeth through it and moved on. Now, though, the d*mned thing is poping up a large, ugly window every day demanding that I “upgrade” to 8.5. I don’t want to upgrade to 8.5 right now, but there’s no way to stop this annoying thing that I’ve been able to discover short of removing AVG from the computer. And the free forum operated by volunteers (there is understandably no free support for the free version) was no help whatsoever.

Fortunately, there are many other free anti-virus applications out there which aren’t designed to be more and more a marketing tool for the paid versions, so my personal computer won’t be unprotected - indeed, I may spend some time installing the alternatives and putting them through their paces for a future blog article. It’s just a shame that a product I have recommended for so many years is made not only useless but actually annoying to the user simply because the marketing drones working for the company just don’t know when to quit. If 8.0 is this marketing-heavy, how bad is 8.5? I sure don’t want to find out, and suggest you don’t, either.

On the other hand, if you use and like the freeware version, post a comment and let me know why…I’m interested to know if other people simply accept the advertising barrage as “situation normal.”