boy, am I glad that so many people feel the same about AVG as I do!

I've used it for years, and loved it. But with AVG 8, they went the way I was really hoping they wouldn't, integrating the spyware with the AV. I suspected that when they did that, they would become another "Nortons", and unfortunately, I was right. The biggest complaint I had was that it was listing many of my programs from PCworld as trojans and shoving them off into neverland without even asking me.

I've since uninstalled it and have started using Avast, and it's been problem free. Yes, I have other programs for protection, but the thing is, I want to choose for myself what programs I want to do jobs on my system, not grant one grand "suite" free reign to do what it wants without consent. I've seen that nightmare too many times with Nortons, and the number of people who have brought me their computers to remove Nortons from it.

I, too, have tried very hard to like AVG 8, especially since I traded in my "lifetime" Ewido license for it! But, I just can't really like it. It seems cumbersome, kind of slow, and not really polished yet. It still causes my e-mail client, Thunderbird, to shut down unexpectedly (at least, I had this problem with AVG 8 when I first installed it a long time ago, and it happened again just recently when I re-installed it). I think I'll "put it on the shelf" for now and see what develops--and in the meantime use something else. Others might not feel the same about it.... (Sorry, I realize that you are talking about AVG Free; I'm talking about, I guess, the paid version.)

Back to Avira -- I have the paid version, but everything I can find says that this one is free for single user, personal, non-commecial use. It only includes antivirus, not antispyware:
http://www.download.com/Avira-AntiVir-Personal-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10322935.html?part=dl-10322935&subj=dl&tag=button

The Avira webpage is here:
http://www.free-av.de/en/download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html

The AntiVir Premium includes antispyware as well as antivirus, but doesn't seem to use much resources. It only costs US $25/year for a single license. I switched to it since I've been submitting malware to VirusTotal and seeing AntiVir performing much better than most other products, although things seem to go in cycles and it's had more problems with some of the most recent malware I've submitted.

According to shadowserver.org, AV programs in general have difficulty identifying these recent samples, as a high percentage are "dropper" malware whose only function is to load the real malware; that malware is usually older and much better detected. Shadowserver's yearly average stats are here:
http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Stats.VirusYearlyStats