In a earlier post this month, I covered the release of the commercial version of AVG 9 and I said that the free version is in the works and will be released very soon. AVG now has finally made the free version available for download from their website (Link below).
AVG has made two different installers, a big install file and a web installer. The size of AVG 9 is rather big compared to some of the antivirus software out in the market. Both version of the installer will set you back around 70 Mb of your monthly downloads.
AVG 9 is compatible with XP/Vista and Windows 7. It comes with an antivirus module as well as other features like detecting spyware, rootkit, a link scanner for detecting potentially dangerous links and provide protection for email and phishing. All the modules can be installed by the users will from the installation process.
There are several performance improvement made by the AVG development team which included faster scanning process and lower resource usage. However from my test install on XP VirtualBox install, I got about 8 processes running when AVG 9.0 is working and total memory usage is 20 Mb when AVG is idle and 37Mb when a scan is under progress.
Personally I would use Eset Nod 32 or Microsoft Security Essentials, as they provide the same protection at a much lower resource cost. But if you would like to try it out yourself the download link is below.
Download [AVG 9Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0]