Zimmer wrote:
However much the OLD Norton sucked, the newer one has made massive improvements. Norton 2009 was a fantastic leap for them, whilst they're maybe not on par with NOD, they've made a good jump towards that standard.
Spybot is utter shit, it's more an adware program itself than what it searches for. Malwarebytes is good though.
I don't really recommend any free AV, they're all pretty poor.
Yea, I'm with Zimmer on this one. Pay for your anti-virus. There really aren't any good, free programs out there. Avira wouldn't remove the rootkit that I had on my computer back in September. MBAM did. MBAM is free also, though if you want active protection, you need to pay.
Norton is also not total shit. I have a Corporate Edition that works great and is lightweight. I bought Norton 2009 for a friend, however, and it's very nice. Very light and doesn't bog the computer down. Read quite a few reviews to make sure I bought him something good because he's older and isn't very Internet smart.
As for a firewall - I can recommend Comodo. Works only on Windows machines, though. It stopped the rootkit I had on my computer from spreading and multiplying. Did a good job of cutting it off and making sure it didn't spread. Definitely recommendable.