If you're on a budget (which a lot of people are) there are alternatives to downloading pirated software (which will only get you in trouble) or spending money you can ill afford.

For a firewall, I like Outpost (Free version) by Agnitum. It has extra features that allow you to fine tune your browsing like Web site content filtering, ad and pop-up blockers, mail attachment filtering and DNS cache - just to name a few. Kerio Personal Firewall, Sygate and Zone Alarm also have free firewall versions which have been used by many here at AntiOnline.

There are 4 free antivirus programs you can check out. Alwil Avast Home Edition, Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus System, H+BEDV Datentechnik AntiVir Personal Edition and Softwin BitDefender Free Edition Version. All 4 programs have automatic pattern updates. Avast will scan your Outlook and POP3/SMTP email, AVG will scan email for Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Exchange client but AntiVir and BitDefender do not include email scanning.

If you are concerned at all about program stragglers, EasyCleaner by ToniArts works well at cleaning up system and registry files, has a backup option (in case you delete something you shouldn't have) and best of all - it's FREE! Definitely consider using Ad-Aware and Spybot Search&Destroy to guard against malware and spyware, both of which have free versions. A program I've been using ever since I read about it here on AntiOnline is SwatIt. It is a free Trojan scanning program that will scan individual files, folders or complete drives. You can also configure it to scan specific file types.

I noticed a new tutorial for securing Windows XP on the AO front page you may want to read and a site I've heard is great for Windows XP info is http://www.theeldergeek.com/.

This should give you a few more options to consider as well as more to read up on. Good luck.


V.