As many of you who use AVG 7 Free have discovered, there has been some server angst at Grisoft since the beginning of the year.

The fact that Grisoft's own AVG Forum now has a thread devoted to griping about the significant failure of the AVG 7 Free's Update service should tell us all something - especially as its been set up by the Forum's Moderators.

The fact that this thread exists at all should be telling Grisoft that they have a problem that is in danger of losing them subscribers (both Free and those that might consider upgrading to their retail product) and it is only a matter of time before the problem becomes 'common knowledge' on the web and in computer print media. If that happens, they will - quite literally - not be able to give their products away.

Grisoft had server angst last year too with AVG 6 but at least there were work-arounds posted very soon thereafter to alter the url.ini file to add other download sites. Not so with AVG 7, though it *seemed* okay until the beginning of the year. Grisoft says they have over 1 million Free users, yet their server bank for Free users appears to be a couple of 486s in somebody's closet in Prague.

More importantly than practically anything else, Grisoft needs to get some mirrors up and running, download new contact addresses into a patch for AVG 7 Free and try and restore some of the considerable goodwill they've lost in less than a month.

Yes, some of us can manually download the updates until there is solution - if ever - but why should we have to? That's not the way the product intended us to use it and does not encourage users to keep up-to-date.

Anti-Vir and Avast! will be picking up some of the freebie users otherwise - and people who resent the bloated and forced 'subscription rates' of the commercial products may even go back to them.

Heck of a business model....