Alternaties to Norton/McAfee PC Security?

[siliconbauhaus]

avg has a free anti-spyware rogramme available. I use it and avg free anti virus.

If I was to pay for one I'd opt for Kaspersky or NOD32

[tedkitch]

I have multiple computers, but the combination that I like the most is the following:

Avast for anti-virus
CounterSpy for spyware
Zone Alarm for firewall (coupled with a hardware firewall on my router)

Only CounterSpy costs any money and it is $20 per year. Nothing has ever gotten past this software and I'm not kidding. It will stop something in it's tracks!!! Well worth the $20.

[dabeeler]

I use F-Secure which is provided by my ISP, Charter Cable. It contains the whole suite of virus, spyware, web filtering etc. It works for me very well.

[John Hunter]

I have been using AVAST for over a year now and I love it!

[backpacker85]

Chalk up one more for someone who got fed up with the overly-invasive, resource hogging Symantic programs. I've been using AVG for a couple years now and love it. Now they've released an entire security suite, but I haven't tried everything yet. I still run Spybot, Adaware and some others periodically.

[scorrpio]

I must be the exception here. I've been using Norton Internet Security since about 2003, and I have zero issues. I do not renew - I simply order a next year version OEM for $20. Not a single malware problem, virus, browser hijack, ad popup or anything. Online gaming - no hassles. NIS might be a system hog, but at least on mt PC, it does not seem to hog very well. Fairly resource intensive games run on it as one would expect from the spec (machine is pretty old, Athlon XP3200+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9700pro is now about midway between 'required' and 'recommended' for most games). Going to multicore CPU should lessen the hogging even further. I already have NIS'07 OEM in my desk waiting for my present license to expire in March.

I did try the free stuff: AVG, ZoneAlarm etc - in particular on my secondary PC, and on the one I built for a friend. Found em cumbersome, in the end installing NIS on secondary PC as well. Guess I'll give Avast a try. Not sure what my friend did, but his AVG/ZA/SpyBot-protected PC became the vilest nest of malware imaginable within 3 months, to the point of becoming unusable. Backed up what we could, did full reformat/reinstall, and set up the $20 OEM version of NIS. Been a year and a half, his PC is still sparkly clean.

Anyway, that's my experience.