Wood, I've tried most of free and paid, here are the ones I found to be most reliable and not to take too much of system resources and not to slowdown internet connection. for spyware Spybot Search & Destroy FireWall: Online Armor Antivirus: Avira Antivir all of the above are free ( forget Norton, Zonelab and a lot of others)
What? I did the upgrade and have not had any problems. edit - I didn't read that gnome asked the same q above me.
Did you ever have a virus incident or problem with AVG? Like you, I've been running AVG for a few years on 5 machines... never a problem yet. (When I had a dialup ISP, they said they used AVG and suggested I do the same.)
The Resource footprint on AVG 8 , is the main issue combined with Link Scanner , "Dropdown Notification" and Outlook email problems. You can tweak it, to disable some of the main features but addition problems seem to appear with browsing speed issues. Rather than messing about its easier to use something like Avira AntiVir untill AVG address the reported issues on the "8" upgrade..
I have also noticed a significant dropoff in browsing speed in the new version of AVG.... I enjoy the product but that feature (Link Scanner) was maddening .... I chose to disable the feature as I am the only one using the computer and don't need them "looking out" for the links I click on. Once I sorted that out the browsing returned to normal speed and the service seems to be back at the level it was before.