>Maybe I'm a bit slow on this but are AVG now bullying us into buying, rather than FREE. Lately all my updates have failed, I go to their site, there's no free edition offered, a link for free users' updates that goes round in a loop, etc. Any recommendations?

I stopped using AVG free after released bloated 8.0 version and switched to Antivir free http://www.free-av.com/en/download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html.