Vista - Whats the Best Antivirus/ Security Suite??

When it comes to antivirus, I liked Rive's advice and i use NOD32.

AVG

In recent lab tests AVG has performed poorly. it came close to recieving no certification at all. It was out performed by both Avast! and Avira in detection and removal of viruses and Malware.

Yeah. I used Avast before Trend. But while I had Avast I received a virus and it couldn't get rid of it, so when I downloaded Trend Micro for the free 30 day trial, it was able to get rid of it. So i thought I'd try Trend out. It has been fine, but I think Avast is just as good (and I guess maybe better after reading that), so I'll be going back to Avast.

Right now I'm Thinking about using Avast, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Windows Firewall for protection (After my trend subscriptions runs out).

Any other suggestions or replacements to this list?

Personally i use Eset NOD32 4 Antivirus/Antispyware, Windows defender and Windows Firewall, and a hardware router firewall.

Yeah, I was going to mention that. I wanted to try NOD32 and it's 40 day trial (I believe). You think Windows defender is fine? Whenever I ran windows defender it never found anything, but when I ran other programs they found things. These were probably just minor things such as cookies though.

It doesnt scan for cookies, and its primarily for spyware- run it with full scan , not default Quick scan. I use it to suppliment the NOD32 antispyware, and to notify and ask for permission on start/run programs that make changes to the computer.

As for cookies, you can do that with Windows IE. My personal setting is to "block All", and then I just click the eyeball on the bottom of IE when I want to allow certain cookies (then refresh the page). This way, the only cookies are the ones you allow.
An easier way though is just to allow first party cookies, and Block all third party cookies-these are the tracking cookies and worse. Along as you dont delete the "allowed" cookie setting you will only have to set this one time (for each domain's cookie you want to allow-usually its the first listing on the site (top),[note the blocked site cookies on my.msn.com] the rest are tracking/ads)

Yup windows defender wont find tracking cookies and similar stuffs. NOD32 4 antivirus is a 30 day trial.

Another thing i like about the new NOD32 version 4 is that it has self defense to prevent malware corrupting it, System Inspector Diagnostics that are color coded (green good, red BAD),[similiar to trend's Hijack this!, but way more advanced] you can password protect it, and create a bootable recovery disk. You can also tweak it for full advanced hueristic detection, and then back up the settings for quick re-install with tweaked settings intact. I tweak mine for full scanning of everything, and full advanced Hueristics (these are not set by default).

note- Eset SysInspector is also a free standalone self diagnostic:http://www.eset.com/download/sysinspector.php

It also doesnt hurt that Eset NOD32 has consistantly recieved the Virus Bulletin Labs VB100 Award year after year, ICSA Labs Certification, Westcoast Labs Checkmark Certification, was the best by AV-comparatives Labs in 2006, 2007, and took close second to Avira in 2008, and currently is the only product to recieve 3 star certification in BOTH Hueristic (retroactive) scanning [Nov 2008], and On-demand Scanning [Feb 2009] also by AV-Comparatives.

Source:
http://www.westcoastlabs.org/
http://www.icsalabs.com/icsa/product...f$gdhkkjk-kkkk
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archiv...ts?vendor=VE14
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seite...e/report20.pdf
http://www.av-comparatives.org/image...c_report21.pdf

Eset NOD32 Lab Certifications, Awards, and honors
Best Anti Spyware software Awards given to ESET

What about Smart Security 4? Is it not necessary to get that rather than NOD32?