"Steve" wrote in message
...
Hi,

My new system will be arriving shortly and although this question is a
little
on the generic side I'm sure some will have suggestions that I hadn't
thought
of. Basically, I'm polling to see which softwares people use to secure the
ship and keep it running smoothly. So far, it seems that the following are
necessaries:

Anti-Virus - seems like Norton's Corporate Edition does the job without
bloating things up

I'd go for Norton or Trend's PC Cillin.


Firewall - not sure which is best here (I'll be subscribing to a cable
modem
service through Adelphia) although I would rather take time to learn how
to
set up a complex yet effective firewall than a simple one that leaves you
overly vunerable or overly restricted.

It depends on what you want to spend. Don't rely on the low-cost routers to
have much of an effective firewall - though there are good hardware
firewalls, they cost quite a bit more than a SOHO router - I'm referring to
the Symantec SOHO Raptors, SonicWalls, WatchGuard, etc.
appliances.

Zone Alarm is as effective a software firewall as you'll find - you don't
need it with one of the true hardware firewalls, but you do with a simple
router-firewall.



Norton Utilities - people seem to say it is good for tuning a system,
especially the defrager, but all the added thingies negate the good it
does.

VCom/Ontrack's System Suite is less intrusive than Norton and its utilities
just as useful.



Pop-up Stopper and Ad-killer - lots of varieties. I guess the trick is to
find
the ones that do the job yet don't plant their own scripts/bots.

AdSubtract works well; so does the new Google Toolbar (which is free and
has search features).