Which ANTIVIRUS works best?

among norton,mcaffe and avast which antivirus prog.works best?

many people suggested me to use avast,currently i am using mcafee...which provides maximum protection against viruses..? both norton and mcafee are paid prog.and avast is free...does that affects its functionality? any other antivirus which you would like to point to?

And yeah...plz mention a good site from where i can download free adware and spyware blockers.....

what is purpose of firewall?

plz help

thnx

Which ANTIVIRUS works best?free anti virus

Personally, I use AVG, IF I am using a Windows system. Of all the ones I have used, it takes up the least amount of resources. Now if you have a super-fast system, any of the others will do well for you, depending on what you use your computer for. I solved the entire problem of virii and spyware and I don't use Windows anymore. I have since moved on to Linux (Ubuntu, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, etc..)

Now the purpose of a firewall is to keep unwanted (and potentially harmful) internet traffic from accessing your computer. I use a firewall suite called IPCop and I have it installed on an old PC I do not use anymore. Its entire purpose is to filter out my broadband connection and olny allow what I want through. If you want to run a firewall on your computer just keep in mind that nothing you run as software along with Windows will be 100% secure. There will always be a security hole somewhere. I just prevent people from getting to my system entirely by using another.