Anti-virus, Anti-spyware etc.

[rirv]

What does everyone reccomend. My computer is quite new. I'm running on XP and have installed avast! and Windows Defender.

Any tips and that?

Also, I'm looking for a copy of Acid Pro. I downloaded a rar from bittorrent but scanned it and it is full of shit. Any tips on this?

[saz]

windows defender is really good, but for anti-virus programs i use avira.

[kaiser soze]

I had AVG but picked up Avira, not sure if it's any better though

Can't help ya with the Acid Pro, I have 4.0 from years ago and I have rarely touched it

[tpk]

anti-virus wise avira is definitely one of the best out there along with kaspersky and nod32. their free version http://www.free-av.com/ has been tested to be pretty much as good for virus protection.

[jennyb]

I often wonder what the deal is with these. Good to hear about this one. I've got some McAffee or something and it stresses me out. I feel like it's now running all the time doing 'scans' and shit. Then I'm obligated to renew my subscription or else what... armageddon of my computer as I know it? They've got my info and stuff, how do we know these companies don't propagate viruses for their own job security? /rant

[ET]

I stand by avira at the moment as being the best free anti-virus program out now. AVG was great until anything before 8.0. I'm leaning toward nod32 as being one of the better paid ones as it doesn't leave as big of a footprint, in terms of RAM useage.

[tpk]

as long as you're not echewta and have an okay firewall and you're not totally oblivious to obvious virus-like signs the free avira software is more than enough. it pretty much always performs better than expensive stuff like norton or mcafee. it's seriously like top 3 stuff, and the fact that it's for free just proves the scam most of these companies are running.

[jabumbo]

i guess its not exactly anti-virus, but i like to run the tune up utilities program a bit on my comp to help clean out a lot of the excess junk.

i probably use it more than i need too though, but its getting to the point where i run disk clean up every 3 days so i don't run out of space

[Fern]

what about a free firewall?

[Echewta]

Not my fault that it said click here and I did. Gesh.

[b-grrrlie]

I've been using avast! for quite along time, but when it alerts for virus I get panicky and propably click on wrong buttons!
So is Avira better then?
I had some spyware protector (can't remember it's name right now), but I changed to Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and
it found several more spies that the other blocker hadn't found made my computer much faster!