Antivirus and spam advise needed

[Misfit]

Hey crunchers, got a decent new lappy and am out of touch a bit. Much to my surprise this thing maxes out skyrim at a decent frame rate and now i'm interested in "trying" out some new titles. With this in mind, I really want to be virus free and am interested in what you guys use if anything. In 20 years, i've never used protection,,,,,,, online. I guess i'm after something that doesn't compromise performance

[pete_uk]

I use Norton Internet Security as I get it free from work and TBH it's fine as long as you have a fairly powerful machine

I have also used the free versions of AVG and AVAST and have found them to be fine as well.

[Egg 'n' chips]

i use avast pro,does the job,stays in the back ground and does it all for you.
available from all good nzb/torrent sites.

[gDrive]

Personally, I use Avast Free Antivirus and like pete_uk/Egg 'n' chips said, it's a decent anti-virus program.

Another free suggestion would be the one xPreatorianx suggested, which is Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - I heard a lot positive things about it but I personally haven't used it, so I can't talk about that from my point of view.

If you're looking for paid antivirus programs, Kaspersky/ESET are the way forward for me.

[2615863]

I used to use kaspersky, which is great, but now I use Microsoft security essentials. Its free, and it doesn't pop up and bother me. Also it works well.

[Monj]

Bitdefender and Malwarebytes...better safe than sorry.

[master737373]

I use BitDefender. I used Malwarebytes in the past. It's good. Honestly, it's on par with the popular AVs and it's free. But I go with bitdefender.

[AlbedoAtoned]

Yep, I went with Microsoft Security essentials and Malwarebytes. It's okay to have two, just as long as both aren't real-time, or try to run at the same time. And you need to whitelist one in the other and vice versa. It was great combination for myself that didn't hog all of the computer's resources. Before that AVG served me well before becoming a resource hog hence the change.

Even more important than anti-virus is the firewall. The starting one is okay for what it is, but don't expect it to really stop anything. I went with Comodo firewall. There are other good ones, both free and paid. With a good firewall and smart browsing habits, the anti-virus becomes less of a "need to run all the time" thing and more of a "scan every couple weeks" type of thing.

[PatrickBatman]

I use ESET and Malwarebytes i have problems maybe 2-3 times a year and I go to a lot of questionable sites. I also use PeerBlock (aka PeerGuardian) when I need too.

[xplaya]

Im the same as above...

Eset NOD32 all the way...
Super Light and has killed all viruses i have come upon...

And Malwarebytes for random spyware checks