mmm! I though I'd have another go at this one :-
Symantecs' Norton has for sometime has been called bloatware, and if you
don't mind the significant system-slowdown that comes with it - it's quite
good. Another Norton minus, in my view, (in previous versions of Norton at
least), is that one ends up with TWO trusted sites lists to maintain, one in
IE, and one in Norton firewall !!
For many years in the past Mcafee VERY often caused nightmares i.e. it was
often very intolerant of most of the myriad OS/software mixes it found
itself installed into. (...dunno if that's true nowadays - Mcafee was so
awful - years ago - I've never revisited it), ...having said that I've
always been grateful for their free a/v CLS.
Panda, ...same as Norton, quite good but, really slows down, (even fast),
systems.
Kaspersky, lots of people rave about it - I found it nothing but trouble -
a year or so ago I tried their internet security suite in several systems
that were clean, tidy and well maintained. Kaspersky refused to perform on
all of them i.e. caused, lock-ups, crashes ...never got on well Kaspersky at
all. ...again, ...quite a good free CLS from Kaspersky though
AVG free (anti-virus only), is really good, minimal impact on system speed
and overhead, not quite as good a detection rate as NOD32 and others but,
one has to pay for NOD32 :-(
AVG anti-spyware is really good, (I pay for that), ....though Windows
Defender has to date, intercepted everything nasty heading my way before it
got anywhere near AVG anti-spyware !! ...and so many out there keep
criticizing Windows Defender !!
....Zonealarm free firewall is VERY good but, occasionally one has to fight
with it.
PrevX, mentioned (negatively) here
http://tibbar.blog.co.uk/ (made in
the UK) is quite good, it's advanced heuristics detection is quite good but,
as with ALL a/v/ a/malware software it often misses things !!
....Spybot Search and Destroy (and the Teatimer realtime scanner help - ),
....in a highly unusual fit of generousness, (is there such a word), a couple
of weeks ago, I donated £15 to Spybot S&D !!!
Lavasoft Adaware (not to be confused with "adware"),
....I could go on and on and on but, won't !
....everybody has their own preferences
However good your "multi-layered" approach to internet security, and
despite ones best efforts in "hardening up" a PC for internet use, (which is
of course attempting the impossible by trying to strike a balance between
safety, (crippling almost everything), and "usablility,"
that "multi-layered" approach is often thwarted and ruined by the owner of
that PC !!
regards, Richard