Yesterday I mentioned ZoneAlarm Security suite, but what about Norton or McAfee?
A few years ago I had a series of bad (and sometimes ridiculous) experiences with the McAfee  Internet Security Suite, and have not used it since. A few months back, someone had some problems on their PC. They had McAfee installed, with a subscription for updates. I advised them to continue with McAfee. A anti-virus with a current update subscription is far better than one with an expired subscription. The longer the subscription stays expired, the more false your sense of security will be…

There are those users that claim that the best defense is a “Best of Breed” Security Suite of you own making. This way you have the best firewall, best Antivirus and best Anti-spyware running on your machine. The only problem is that this is more prone to some sort of incompatibilities, with one of the program stepping on one of the others. I would only recommend doing this if you really know what you are doing.

Then there is the cheap or free Internet security suite – “cheapest of breed”. This way you combine a free firewall with a free antivirus and free anti-spyware. I have done this one of my old machines which doesn’t get used often but still needs full protection.