Many of you know about my passion for free software. There is almost always a free version of popular software that you can use at home to save some money. Digsby was one of my more recent suggestions.
Lifehacker just did a Hive 5 on Antivirus Software. I’ve used AVG and Avast at home. Either is good, but I currently prefer AVG for my antivirus needs. If you don’t run AV software, you really should start. If you’re paying for Norton or McAfee, I’d get rid of them in favor of one these free solutions. They work just as well in my experience and take up less memory most of the time.
Hi there – I’ve just started using AVG as I’ve also just become a work at home Mum. I got a notice saying I won’t be getting any free updates after June 1. How did you get around this?
I haven’t noticed that problem. It sounds like maybe you were on a trial version of one of the pay versions tho. In your windows system tray, there should be an icon for AVG that looks like 4 colored squares making a bigger square. Right click that and select “Open AVG User Interface”. Once that window opens, click the Help/About AVG. A screen will come up with your program name and version number. It should read “AVG Anti-Virus Free” for the program name. If it says something else, you’ll need to uninstall it and go to free.grisoft.com and download the free version.
It takes 3 or 4 clicks from there to actually get the free one and they emphasize the pay versions, so it’s easy to make a mistake and end up with one of those. Scan the page until you find the free links and you’ll get there eventually. As of 6/9/2008, the file you’ll end up downloading is called “avg_free_stf_en_8_100a1295.exe”.
Hope that helps!