Greetings All:

Personally, I think installing a whole ton of crap will effect system performance more than the adware would to begin with.

If you're a home user, install 1 good AntiVirus App on your box, end of story.

I have ALWAYS felt that firewalls do NOT belong on the desktop. They belong on a hardware interface sitting on your gateway. Most DSL/Cable routers these days have built in firewalling that is more than enough for the needs of the average home user, and is more than comparable to anything you can install on the desktop anyway.

My vote? Make sure your cable/dsl router has its firewall configured. If it doesn't have one, spend the $100 or whatever to buy one that does. Set up windows update to auto download patches for you. Then, install Norton AntiVirus, and leave things the hell alone.

Obviously, the needs for computers on a Corporate or Governmental network are different, and my comments above do not apply to them. (except the part of installing only 1 antivirus app, and that firewalls should not be on desktops, well, i guess most of my comments DO apply after all).