Version 8 has already been acknowledged as a state-of-the-art protection solution, and I bet the free edition is equally good even though it may lack a few features when compared to the paid version.

Besides the obvious (killing threats) the GUI looks much better;

Great first impression! Installation went smoothly and so far I’ve nothing negative to say about it. Let me know what you think about it if you decide to give it a try. You can grab the source from AVG directly (much faster than download.com).