Just because a program like anti spyware of a firewall is free doesn't mean it's not good. No, but it's useless if the user doesn't know what it does or how it works. Imagine you have the best firewall in the world, but somehow get a trojan on your computer (friend's CD?). How, do you think, would your firewall tell you that this trojan is trying to access the internet? a) "Hi, here's the very bad big Trojan IWILLCRACKYOU and it's trying to access the internet. Would you like to allow that?" OR rather b) "Hi, this is the Internet Explorer / Windows Update / any-internet-requiring-useful-software-on-your-computer, and it would like to access the internet. Would you like to allow that?" and, if b) would pop up from your firewall - would you allow it? A virus scanner is nice. But remember that if you 'just' update it once a day with new virus definitions, a cracker still has at least 24 hours in between to create a virus / worm / backdoor / trojan which your virus scanner won't detect. And I'm speaking of updating it every single day, plus the aforementioned virus / worm / backdoor / trojan would have to be recognized by the virus scanner programmers within that time, so that they are able to write a virus definition - which is often not the case. So - to make it short: If you have no idea of the internet and its risks, and if you have no idea how to avoid them, then, by all means, stay off the internet. However, if you know what you're doing, if you know that you must not click on and download everything that doesn't jump away fast enough, then you don't need either a virus scanner or a firewall. I've been on the net since 1995, up to twenty-four hours per day, and in all that time, I have caught one virus - through a friend's CD ("100% virus free!" - Haha!). And I neither have a firewall nor a virus scanner. BTW, Bones: SOOOO glad to read something from you again!