Actually, the best thing I found, in addition to a fw, latest patches, latest av, is to run as a limited user.

If you are a limited user instead of an admin, you have a whole lot more protection than just about anything else you can do.

When I get more space, I'm going to have one machine running as a limited user for almost all my internet surfing.

chris

I an using ZoneAlarm which is good but sometimes is eating up too much resources

Precisely how have you come to this conclusion?

Kaled.

I like Norton Internet Security. It does slow machines down, but it's the only one I trust.

There was a free program some time ago called Tiny Personal Firewall that came out on top of most comparisons that I still use to this day. And free to boot! If you do a search for pf2.exe you should still be able to find a download somwhere.

Onya
Woz

Kaspersky, the best, hands down.

How did I come to that conclusion..

I use their Anti-Hacker and Anti-Virus. They work as expected and never once have caused me, the user, any problems - with either the OS or the application software. Norton can't say that. The Anti-Hacker allows you to easily manage your firewall.

There are other good solutions. Black Ice worked well for me. If I ever feel the need to switch, I would use it again. Norton can't say that ;)

Zonealarm is by far the most popular, if you find your machine running slowly, you had better do

hi jack tests

anti virus checks

update yor system via windows up date to its latest version, generally when zonealarm is running resource consumption is rarely an issue