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Sorry to just post this in here, but is it bad to have many virus/spyware etc software installed? Should you only have 1 or 2?

Antivirus-- you should only have one. 2 or more interfere with each other --leaving you less protected

Firewall-- Also just one-- although I use a software firewall with a router/hardware-firewall. Never use 2 Software firewalls-- for the same reason as AV

Antispyware-- if you have more than one it's actually good-- but you should not have an "active" scanner for more than one program at a time.

Spybot S&D --has a couple of active monitor components

Ad-Aware has Ad-watch

basically-- you want one program of each major type-- and if you want to have active spyware protection-- it's optional.

I do manual scans for spyware twice a week or more depending on usage.

I'm not really a fan of 'suites' but I do think F-Secure internet security is fantastic if set up right and it's what I use on a few family computers.

I tend to run free stuff myself as I find it sufficient for my needs as I normally don't run things from a source I don't know and I'm just fairly careful, security is more thinking about things than software IMO.

The one thing I will say is some of the free stuff (like Adaware Personal) bugs me as there is no scheduling there.

The one thing I will say made a BIG difference though is a dedicated firewall, I currently use smoothwall on an old P2 box which does quite a lot (Firewall, IDS, Ad filtering at the server level, Proxy/DNS caching, bandwidth management, wireless tunneling) but to be perfectly honest for a regular user this is way over the top and It's only there because I love tinkering.