There are a number of good AV's (besides those mentioned below--AVG, Kaspersky, Avast!, NOD32, etc.)--with comparisons, opinions, and tests of them varying widely sometimes. I won't use McAfee and Norton because, in the past, each has been two obtrusive for me. Also, I have begun to strongly prefer combo AV's/MW's. Recently, I have started using both Spyware Doctor with AV (on Dell Laptop) and Bit Defender with MW (new HP laptop). I don't have a strong preference for one over the other. Both are simple and adustable enough. I am liking ZoneAlarm (free) on both. I actually was going to buy ZoneAlarm Pro, but it is not yet readyy for Vista. Now that I have used free enough, I have decided that Pro would be a waste. Free can be a bit annoying at first, but once one's programs have called home once all is peaceful. ZoneAlarm has the only turely effective and easy to use outgoing monitoring I have found.
I continue to use my security setup for my Gateway desktop as described in my first post above. Still flawless. I have not yet set something similar up on the new laptop, but will do so soon. I wanted to get all of ZoneAlarm's business with my non-virtual system done before setting up virtual surfing on the new machine. Once all of ZoneAlarm's business is done, then, yes, virtual surfing (turning off Bit Defender on my physical machine). On the other hand, with ZoneAlarm done, I can return to physical surfing when on the road and the need arises. I had thought of some reason I might want to do so, but right now I can't remember what is was.
Help me here!!! Is it something obvious? Duh? Check out these reads.
PC World on AV's PC World on MW's
By the way,
here is my new laptop except that my personal one has HDMI; jillions of inputs/outputs; HD Drive; HD/Digital TV Tuner; 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 2 GB RAM; NVIDIA card; hi-cap battery; Realtek "HD" audio; 140 GB; wireless b/g/n; 2-year fix-at-home warranty; Home Premium; integrated webcam, mic, and fingerprint reader; Bluetooth; etc., etc. You all know that I think that Gateway is topnotch. I now think that HP is too, perhaps the best to order from. My machine is great and very attractive; HP shipped 4 days prior to expected; and FedEx, with HP's partnership, got the machine here overnight even though I had it shipped 5-7 business days. Oh, and the lady I talked with on the phone was excellent. But, she said that HP's sales/support is worldwide--so one might not always be so lucky. I'm not worried about support though. Whatever!!!
Dell has sort of lost it obviously. The best part of Dell is that if one gets an XPS model, then support is strong and at home. My problems with Dell are it's incredibly convoluted website and that the Company tends to put too many unwanteds on its machines--which makes it hard for them to compete effectively price-wise even with educational pricing. I bought the HP at HP's website price because I became convinced that Dell could not match the machine/price even with educational pricing. Given online "deals", my HP cost less than USD 1,600 before tax (free shipping).