To the experts from a newbie:

Bought a Sony NW series over the weekend w/ Win 7. This is the first computer I have ever owned, all others have been corporate and handed to me complete and ready to go. (and problems were handled by handing it back )

Mr. Sophie has (always) purchased McAfee and it seems to be working for him. but....

... based on comments in this forum, just loaded Avast AV - and appears to be running OK. (I am hoping running ='s working) I went with the free home edition - is the upgrade to the professional version worth the $$$?

Should I add any other virus or spyware protection?

Norton was pre-loaded. Should I now remove it? Is there anything else I should remove/close/adjust?

TIA for your help!

Absolutely remove Norton! It's bloated, slow and interferes with a lot of other software. The free version of Avast is all I use. Anti-malware software is important, but more important is learning what to do to avoid malware in the first place.

[QUOTE=PTravel;13202470]Absolutely remove Norton! It's bloated, slow and interferes with a lot of other software. The free version of Avast is all I use. Anti-malware software is important, but more important is learning what to do to avoid malware in the first place.[/QUOTE]

Actually, on that I am pretty knowledgeable - the same people who hand out those corporate computers are a whiz at teaching mal-ware prevention!

The general wisdom is to not install two anti-virus programs in your computer.

If you are up to it, you should take a look at Avast! Support Forum (Home/Pro). Make sure to follow the instructions (see reply#3) so Norton can be removed completely from your system.

thank you. this was quite helpful and will be a future resource.

Other than Avast (which I run on my personal notebook), I'd also recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free. Those two together seem to work well.

Just to be disagreeable ...

1) Norton gained a deservedly bad reputation about 2005 or so, and retained it for seveal years. However, 2009 and 2010 versions of Norton AntiVirus (not Norton Internet Security or Norton 360) are quite lean and fast.

2) Definitely remove Norton if you are going to rely on Avast. Having two AV products on a computer is asking for trouble.

3) Don't expect antivirus programs to catch everything - in the last 6 months or so, fake or rogue antivirus programs (which are Trojans) are slipping past most every AV program out there. Currently, MalwareBytes is the best remedy for Trojans.

4) What works really well this year may not work well at all next year. Two years ago, I recommended everyone use Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware as a one-two punch for malware. For those who really wanted to spend money, Webroot antispyware was fairly good for a brief time two or three years ago. Now, none of these are particularly good. Currently MalwareBytes is best for removing Trojans, and I use Hijackthis if necessary to stop processes enough to load MalwareBytes, and Combofix if the computer has rootkits or stuff MalwareBytes can't fix.

My point is, you have a moving target, and you need to stay current on tools. The same can be said of antivirus - I was in love with Eset NOD32 for about a year, but now find it just so-so - it's still faster than most, but it's not so easy to manage for most novice users (most of my clients).

I'm a huge fan of Avast, but I have removed Avast from all my computers (windows based) and installed Microsoft Security Essentials to replace it.

MSE has tested pretty well in anti-virus tests, as good or better than Avast. It's lighter on system resources, and does not require manual registration every 16-18 months.

I would give MSE a big thumbs up and recommend you switch to it over any other free anti-virus. And I've never paid for anti-virus, and have never gotten infected.

The only time I got infected was with a paid version of Norton running my PC, installed by corporate, LOL.

I too have joined the MSE bandwagon, coming from Avast. Both are good, but Avast seems to bring the system to a stop from time to time, and there are also times it didn't play well at all with Outlook.

But until MSE came along, it was my preferred antivirus.

Thanks for the help on this post. This is one reason I love FT and have been here for so long. I can come here and do a quick search and find info I really need now. I just installed MSE hope it helps...

I second, MSE for now seems the right choice.

Another vote for MSE here.^