Good Adware / Spyware defense

Note: You need at least one from each category. 

Adware / Spyware defense Microsoft Windows Defender (Download here) SpyBot Search & Destroy (donations) $20 CounterSpy $30 Webroot SpySweeper	Cheap / good anti-virus $40 Kapersky $00 Grisoft AVGfree $00 PCTools Free virus scans online:
	Trend Panda
Firewall Note: See the next topic below. Firewall in Live OneCare is very good. $20 Kerio (free if you don't buy, but less featured. Only techies care about the features.)	Popups Use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Microsft's proprietary Active-X is the source of most the spyware penetration. Firefox has developed a safe version. The security exposeres are blocked.
Windows XP and Vista Best deal going, and as good as it gets... Windows Live Onecare for $50 / year and you can put it on up to 3 PC's.	Anti Virus, Anti Spy, Firewall, Backup.

Firefox is the best prevention you can have.  Use it!  Firefox has more useful user features than does MS Internet Explorer.  Use the very good Firefox Help Help to learn about it.

For email, Thunderbird is your friend. If you install Thunderbird (Mozilla companion to FireFox), first launch it will ask you if you want o import settings from Microsoft Outlook. Answer 'yes'.

Sea Monkey Note. Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client are packaged together (with some more tools you probably do not care about) by Mozilla.org. Sea Monkey is essentially the newest Netscape before it is given to AOL (Who owns Netscape, the retail marketing brand.)