Hello.  Just wanted to advise readers of my setup:

I have McAfee VirusScan Pro 9.0 for my antivirus protection.  It's caught everything so far that's come my way, even some that Norton and the others haven't.  Also it's very good at picking potentially dangerous files such as some activeX controls.  However, if you often experiment with programming or disassembly, you might want to turn off the 'Potentially Unwanted Programs' scanning so it doesn't pick those programs up as potentially dangerous.  It's also the most unintrusive program I've found, most of the time you never know it's there, even during updates which are quite regular.

McAfee Personal Firewall for firewall protection:
This is another one of Mcafee's products and integrates seemlessly with the VirusScan mentioned above.  Again, it's 'smart' engine means that once you've stated your opinion of a program (allowed or not allowed) it will handle the rest for you without prompting you every time that program is run (unless you ask it to, of course).  The interface is great, both antivirus and firewall can be access from the same control panel, and the control of programs and filters is excellent also.  Again, unintrusive and both programs do not hog any system resources.  The one thing I hated about Norton was it's popping up all ver the place all the time, and the high amount of user interaction required with the program.  Also Norton loads many, many, many system tasks at startup, and really slows things down, especially for things such as browsing the web and opening documents.

Spybot Search and Destroy for spyware deletion: Mentioned Above

Ad-Aware SE Professional:
This is another good program.  Ad-Watch which comes with it is good for picking up adware before it infects your system, and after-infection detection is good, although Spybot should be used in conjunction for optimum results.

Hope this helps.

Hussein.

I use Norton (anti-virus, snti-spyware, anti-adware, and parental control) simply because I got it on sale.  Works great, the only complaint I have has already been mentioned: it pops up and annoys you every now and then.

One thing I found while running spybot: every now and then I'd get hit with a certain piece of adware.  Spybot would pick it up but I'd have to manually delete.  I'd be fine for a few weeks and it'd come back.  Then I got Norton and only rarely used Spybot.  Norton found the adware just like Spybot did but the funny thing was the adware wouldn't show up until I did a Spybot scan.  I'd run Norton, find nothing, run Spybot, and both would find a piece of adware.  So I lost my trust in Spybot.  Perhaps "free" isn't really "free"?  I don't know.

If system resources are a necessitiy then trash Norton and get the freewares mentioned above. Norton will take control of your PC and your wallet when it comes time to pay for the program again and again

and yes Using Adaware and Spybot together is recommended, one will find stuff the other may miss.

Since running a set up of AVG (or Avast another excellent av), Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, and Spyware Blaster I have not had any infections or intrusions, and all these still are faster and use less resources than one Norton item