Wow! There are definitely a lot of pretty points to consider in here. Most of the tips I had gone through and it is really effective.

Hmm.. let me see…

Firewall : ZoneAlarm
AntiVirus : AVG
Other Tools : MS AntiSpyware, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, etc.

P2P : I don’t use it.
Imsecure : Last year I had used it in my Yahoo! IM but sad to say nobody else (from my friends) want to use it. I had decided to stop using it since no one supports from them supports it and most of the time I use to surf in the Internet café. True indeed - “but the encryption will only be effective if the utility is used on both ends”.

E-Mail : If it is really important message, I use PGP to encrypt the content.

Windows : Most of the time I used non-Admin user when I connect to the internet. Good thing there is an option “Run As” when I need to make important changes while ONLINE.

Web Browser : I used Firefox (since then I have minimal adware/spyware case in my box.

Active X : disabled in Firefox

Win XP SP2 : I haven’t done it with my Box. I got far as SP1 and the latest update. Hopefully I will do it in the near future.

Definitely a good guide.

-GONEin62nd