Overkill or not - avast realtime, web shield, spybot teamtimer, Microsoft family

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I now have around 4 programs sitting between a website and my disk/users. These are:

  • Avast 4.8 with all realtime scanners enabled
  • Microsoft family safety – for restricting access to “adult” and similar sites (kids at home)
  • Spybot SD with “team timer” active
  • I also use OpenDNS with domain name blocking…
  • I’m behind a NAT router, but just have the std windows firewall.
  • Most browsing is via firefox or google chrome

I don’t think I’m doing too bad, but it does cross my mind that some of the above could cause browsing performance issues – I certainly appear to have them from time to time … but of course there’s many different reasons – recently it’s been bad firefox config (caused by older version of the downthemall firefox plugin)

Specifically family safety, the avast scanner & spybot all act (AFAIK) as http proxies. I am wondering if the avast scanner and spoybot especially are overkill? Thoughts on that? Or on the impact to performance?

2

I’ve never been a fan of tea timer, I usually don’t install it with Spybot. However, Spybot is good to have.

OpenDNS is great, and so is Avast (of course).

Windows Firewall should be sufficient in most cases.

Just make sure that you have all of your windows updates, and visit http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/

to make sure that everything else on your computer is up to date.

Other than that, you’re doing pretty good.

3

Another vote for scythe944’s suggestions :wink:

4

What doesn’t appear on your list is a back-up and recovery strategy for when all else fails.

If you Fail to Plan then you Plan to Fail.

If you don’t want to lose it, back it up.

5

Yes really truly :frowning:

I lost 3 heavy-duty almost unreplaceable unrebuildable spreadsheets simply because I thought they were in a safe place :cry:

Gordon.

6

This is why I use on-line backup constantly running in background…
If you want too, click Mozy in my signature.