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Believe it or not, some of the best computer applications are free. Why spend money for Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security updates when you can get all of that for free? Actually, while I am talking about Norton, let me say something else. They are a huge scam! Don't buy Norton products. There business ethics are horrible. Not only do they constantly nag at customers and make things difficult for them, but they outsource their technical support to Mars! So not only have they gotten rid of American jobs, but they are also getting rid of global jobs! Wow... why am I ranting about Norton? This was supposed to be an article about free computer protection software. So let's crack it out. 
Anti-Virus Software: My personal favorite anti-virus software is Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus. AVG Anti-Virus is a fully functional virus scanner. It includes memory-resident scanners as well as email scanners. It can detect many viruses as soon as an infected files reaches your computer. But don't let that stop you from scanning every file you download. Compared to a lot of other anti-virus software, AVG is very light-weight and fast, making it good for low performance computers and high performance computers alike. The only small drawback to the free version that I have noticed is that you may not schedule your own scans or update times. By default AVG will update your virus definitions between 8am and 10am and it will scan your computer on a daily basis at 8am. Other good free anti-virus software that I have heard of (but have no first hand experience with) are: Avast! Anti-Virus, and BitDefender. Anti-Spyware Software: I've been using a new free application for anti-spyware and it's been great. That application is SUPERAntiSpyware. Yes, it has a funny sounding name, but it is a great product. The free version offers on-demand scanning and free updates. However, with the free version you can't schedule automatic updates or automatic scanning. Like AVG, SUPERAntiSpyware is a light-weight and quick application. It's detection rate is superb and it gets rid of a lot of crap quickly. Lavasoft's Ad-Aware was an anti-spyware application that I used to use and it was a very good spyware scanner. Spybot Search and Destroy is a good application to use in conjunction with another main scanner. Spybot does a good job of protecting the Windows registry to prevent unauthorized changes in the first place. Firewall Software: When it comes to firewall applications, there is no doubt in my mind that Comodo Firewall is the best free firewall. It may possibly even beat retail firewalls. I know it beats Norton anyway. Of course, Comodo is light-weight and easy to install and use. It will not slow down your system and give all kinds of crazy warnings like Norton does. Whenever a new application attempts to connect to the internet, Comodo will ask you if you'd like to allow the process and also has a checkbox to always allow. Some firewalls are freakishly slow, ineffective, and annoying as hell. Comodo is not. Get Comodo now and uninstall your old crappy firewall. So that's it! There is your full suite of computer protection software. Download it and uninstall any old anti-virus, spyware, or firewall software. Keep these up to date and be sure to manually scan every file that you download and your computer should keep running well.
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