Please, can someone explain me in plain and simple terms. That AVG Anti-Virus is not FREE! anymore or what? So, if you want AVG at all you pay! Correct me if am wrong. The new AVG Anti-Virus 7.5? Their website says?

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1


"GRISOFT is announcing a new version of the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. This new 7.5 version with improved performance and full compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version is available. Users that are using AVG Free 7.1 will be provided with a specific dialog, within the next few weeks, with the opportunity to choose the right option fulfilling their needs. AVG Free 7.1 version will be discontinued on 15th of Jan 2007."

can someone shed some light on this subject?

thanks in advance

Seems to me that the 7.1 version will cease to exist (in all practical senses) and will be replaced with 7.5. As far as I can make out, it'll still be free. In fact, nowhere in that passage above does it say you'll have to pay for the new version, it just says you'll be offered the upgrade to 7.5.

Hope I got that right!

There's still an AVG 7.5 free edition. All that the announcement says is that they're discontinuing support for the old 7.1 edition in order to encourage people to upgrade to AVG 7.5

Hope that helps!

I was similarly confused by the pop-up on my 'doze box.
Let's call it "creative publicity".

No, you don't have to buy 7.5 - do so if you wish. Download the free 7.5 - install it as a "repair" (at least under 'doze).
Runs fine as far as I can tell.

There is still a freeware version of AVG.

Check out http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti.../lng/us/tpl/v5

Ahem...

So, where exactly did we get the notion that "anti-virus software is something you absolutely must have?"

Isn't that equivalent to the notion that 'you must hire someone to close the gate after your thoroughbreds have run free' instead of 'keeping the damned gate shut in the first place?'

Imho, the entire notion of "anti-virus software" is hopelessly flawed from the very beginning. You cannot hope to keep-out software that will attempt to do nasty things! But you certainly can keep any such software from succeeding!

("Hopelessly flawed," yes. But "immensely profitable," also yes! )

If (say...) a program tries to modify a system file, or to alter a system registry-key [in Windows...], the operating system should be able to kill the program dead in its tracks for its capital crimes. It is therefore not a question of "intercepting the action after it has already occurred, and cleaning-up after it." Rather, "the attempt did not succeed and therefore there is nothing to clean up."

If you keep your house in order, as both Linux and Windows enable you to do, then "there is no room in the inn" for anti-virus software.

Isn't that being a bit complacent? No house is really in order.
Recent examples of so-called sahe houses are people losing data in gmail (cross reference links in FireFox!) and WMF files. So how does one work around it? Either pay upgrade tax to microsoft or fix the browser or laod load an anti virus program.

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I think the quote you produced answers your own question! Read the line So yes, there is a new verison of the free edition.

In general, I dont know whats to worry even if AVG becomes a completely paid product/service and you dont want to shell out bucks to AVG?

I think that the market is mature enough and more free anti-virus products will come along.

I remember, other companies like CA had a free product (inoculan?). When it became paid, I just moved away from it and came to AVG.

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Respectfully, I don't agree with you. Not in the slightest.

A system must keep its own house in order, no matter what the end-users do. (Imagine that "the end-users" are a university full of bored-but-extremely-bright computer-science PhD-candidate students...) It is absolutely basic that the following two requirements must be met:

1. No matter what a user does to himself, the user must not be able to affect any user other than himself.
2. No matter what a user does to himself, the user must not be able to affect the system at large.

Only the operating-system can ever be in a position to enforce such requirements, and then only if the operating system is properly configured. But... it is!

"Anti-virus software," no matter how profitable it may be, fundamentally depends upon the notion that, were it not for the presence of the AV software, any virus's intrusion-attempt would succeed. This basically means that the user in question is an Administrator or Root, with carte blanche access to the machine in question. And only in a "vanilla Windows, pre-Vista," installation is that the case. Or Windows 3.x, which was a long-g-g-g time ago.

A properly-configured Linux system, imho, has absolutely no need for "anti-virus" software.

I still can't understand why a purely MS problem has you fretting here.
The only AV system I know of for Linux is clamav, and even that is more of a server side mail checker for MS Winslows stuff.
I don't know about anybody else, but my only Winslows machine is not allowed out into the real world of the internet.
I did read last year, that a group of people at MIT, deliberately shutdown security on a Linux box, then deliberately released 5 of the worst virii into the system. All dead. Not one virus actually got anywhere. Most of them, are only a VB Script, apparently. So no real worry to a Linux user, unless you have Windows in your network, and even then the firewalling in Linux should keep you safe enough.
Occasionally, my server reports an attempted port scan, good luck to the Hackrats.

Shorty943.