you are all gonna think im a moron, but...

System protection. few questions:

1: can someone try to explain what the problem with norton is
2: can someone explain in stupid terms that free stuff is good? parents are afraid of anything free :S
3: what's a good set of AV, firewall, antispy, whatever else for a new XP computer?

thanks

ST47

 

Good explanations right here: How to Protect yourself from malware!

 

These are the programs I have with XP home, SP2 and have had no problems or coflicks what-so-ever:
AVG free edition
Zone Alarm free
SpywareGuard
Spy Blaster
Lavasoft ad-aware personal
MS anti spy
Window firewall
Edwido
A squared
Spybot search &destroy
Advances spyware remover
Amust Reg cleaner
CleanUP
CCleaner
Registry Mechanic
CW shreeder
Vcleaner
and Ithink that's about all !

 

To answer your first question,

Norton can cause a lot of problems and can be very hard to uninstall.

The program demands a lot of disk space and resources, hence the common name of bloatware.

This can affect the PC's overall performance.


2. You don't necessarily have to pay to get good products.

ZoneAlarm, Opera, FireFox and Google etc are the best in their field and free.