-Mario- -Mario-:
What about the all in ones??? AVG offers a virus, firewall, and spyware protection for just over $50. Do you thing they are affective?
I wouldn't pay for those other things, myself.
If you want a firewall, the XP SP2 one is kind of lousy (since it does nothing with outbound connections, lest you be alerted to all of the spyware features in Microsoft products), but it's free, and even the most technically unskilled can use it. Agnitum Outpost (
www.agnitum.com) comes in a freeware version which is very good if you only have 1 network interface, and isn't crippled like the Windows one, plus it's free for ALL use (personal or otherwise). Takes a little more understanding of your system to use, but not an inordinate amount of understanding -- just enough so that you don't deny your operating system access to the Internet. And there are others.
Spyware: If you use any browser except for IE, this will rarely be a problem. If you also get, install, and run "inoculate" every few months with Spywareblaster and Spybot S&D, it will virtually never be a problem.
In short, I don't see any real need to pay for any security products, unless you MUST use IE and/or Outlook. But then, almost nothing will be guaranteed to keep you safe, no matter how much you pay.
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Here's another security tip, for those who are interested. Did you know that you can run individual processes with reduced privileges, so that while, for example, using an administrator account, you can run your browser as "guest"? This can be very handy for reducing risks from (the common) badly written software, or even (the less common) maliciously trojaned freebie you downloaded from an untrusted source. And yes, it's free.
http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1848
CKA Uber 
