I've recommended AVG for years. Now I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

But this is mostly for my work. It's easier to get people to switch from Norton and McAfee if they recognize the company making the alternative. Nobody recognizes Grisoft or AVG.

But beyond that, AVG is well on their way to becoming Norton and McAfee. Apparently they didn't realize that software bloat is the reason that a lot of geekier people used their software. In turn, because the geeks liked it, they recommended it to people they knew. I know that I've installed AVG on at least 100 machines over the years. Granted, they were all the free version, but I know that in one case it resulted in a purchase of the paid version.

Then there's the false positives. This past year has been bad for false positives in AVG. First, it kept catching a component of my favorite file copy/transfer program, Teracopy. I had to make an exception to the whole folder, which is not a good thing (and no, it's not a virus - Grisoft knows about it, says it's okay, but isn't doing anything about it). Then there was the big one where it detected part of iTunes. I suppose false positives are going to happen, but they never happened to me in the previous 5-7 years that I used the product.

Lastly, there's one thing about AVG that always annoyed me. Like I said, I've installed AVG on a lot of computers. Well every time AVG updates the free software and discontinues support for the old version, they give the user a popup notifying them of that fact. The problem is that this notice is always worded in such a way that it makes it sound like there will be no free version offered anymore, so the user should upgrade to the paid version. I can understand their desire to get people to start paying for the software, but they shouldn't do it by tricking people into it, and it becomes a pretty big deal every time they do it. The tech section of the Washington Post had a mention of it the last time it happened. I also start getting dozens of calls asking why their antivirus isn't free when I said it was. Now, with the release of AVG 9 (which has even more "features"), the clock is counting down until when they stop support for 8/8.5 and I start getting those calls again.

I really liked AVG, but it's no good anymore. I installed Microsoft Security Essentials mostly because I just don't care all that much, it seems pretty unobtrusive, and it's free.