It’s no small secret to people I know that I do not pay for an anti-virus program; I use a free one. My family uses a free one. Friends use a free one. People I know use a free one. And so on. And so on. And so on. (Queue nostalgia for classic Faberge shampoo commercial).

While there are a few contenders for title of The Best Free Anti-Virus Program out there, the one I always thought the best, just got better.

The new version of Avast! Free Antivirus, 5.0 made major changes including a redesigned modernized interface, improved virus and spyware engine, a new heuristics engine to protect you from malware, a behavior shield and best of all optimized performance to take advantage of multiple core processors which can reduce scanning time by up to 40%!

The old interface, which looked more like a music player confused some people and is gone in favor of a modern, streamlined easy-to-use design. There are 6 real-time shields for Files, Web, P2P, Instant Messaging, Network and Behavior; all of which come with real-time activity reporting graphs if you click on them. The latest version is high on performance and even with the additions and faster scanning uses less system resources. Win-win!

I’ve used Avast! for years after running into some problems with AVG Free Antivirus and haven’t looked back yet. And I’m not about to with Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0; I love it even more now and there are plenty of other people that agree with me. Avast! recently crossed the 100 million user mark last December. They’ve also recently joined a partnership with Google to promote Avast! and the Google Chrome browser.

If you’re paying for an anti-virus program or you’re using a different free one, give Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 a try. Or not. It’s a free country.