If I were to buy a "security suite" (such as Norton) would that take care of all of my security needs (ie. firewall, spamblocker, spyware blocker, etc), so downloading Adaware or Spybot or anything would be unnecessary? I'm just trying to make sure that I'm completely covered and any clarification here would be really helpful.
Just about every pc that comes into my repair stream infected beyong realistic salvage has a paid version of norton or kaspersky on it.. IMHO these paid things are useless. They can't work properly or why would you buy a new one every year?
Free av apps are far better.. updated regularly and more than good enough for home users.. Interesting isn't it when you read through ALL the broken system repair topics here that they all started off with payware "security" suites and end up needing to be fixed using freeware tools.
This all I have
1. avg 8.5 free version
2. zonealarmfirewall pro version (not the suite) they have a free version available
3. firefox 3.0 as browser
4. returnil (free version) I use this as my antispyware, when you have returnil enabled your computer is immune of getting any permanent damage from viruses/spyware. Since this program runs in RAM memory it doesn't slow down your computer.
And finally have a good imaging software I use true image, but there is the free macrium reflect that will also work for you. Just make a backup of your c: drive when it is new and save it, if you suffer and virus/spyware attack that you can't fix, just restore that image. It takes about 10 minutes (longer if you have a large c: drive) to restore, instead of reinstalling windows.
That's all you need I don't use spybot/adaware/ or any antispyware software they slow down your computer too much. Also the all-in-one are bloated in most cases.
I haven't suffered any virus/spyware attack in years using this basic protection. The firefox browser is very important, because it is more resistant to attack than internet explorer. Never had my firefox browser homepage changed, something that happen frequently with internet explorer.
