AV and firewall recommendations

From: Newbie techie (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 02/20/04 

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:51:06 -0800

Eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new laptop with XP Pro... planning ahead, I'm wondering about the best anti-virus and firewall software to use. Currently I use Norton AV and ZoneAlarm on Windows ME. They slow things down very much and often cause the PC to freeze for minutes at a time-- sometimes even crash. Granted, a large part of the problem is ME itself... can't wait to get rid of it!... but the fact remains that Norton (and seemingly ZoneAlarm as well) is exceedingly FAT and unwieldy software, that I hate to use if I don't have to. And it's been playing very poorly with other software. Any recommendations for the best (most stable, least intrusive, frequently updated signatures) AV software for XP? And as for the firewall, is the integral XP firewall adequate, or will I need to use ZoneAlarm again (we have an always-on DSL connection).

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