Intro: This is a simple guide that explains how to set up virus and spyware protection on your PC.
Difficulty Level: Feeding the ducks.
Applicable Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, although there is no reason I can think of that this wouldn’t apply to previous versions.

So perhaps you have heard horror stories, from friends or colleagues, about that bad new virus that just came out.  Maybe you have had a virus on your pc in the past, and you paid the neighbor kid 20 bucks to get rid of it.  Maybe someone on the news said something about the ‘next big virus’ to hit pc’s (or perhaps it was on the news anchors pc, and now because of it, the story she was working on is lost forever and she had to report about something, right?). So everyone runs out to the local pc store to pick up a copy of [name of antivirus product here] because they get all flipped out over it.  Good news, YOU can ease your finger off the panic button.  A little prevention can go along way.

Part 1: (Free) Antivirus Software.  You would be surprised at how many people have released to the public, free antivirus software.  I recommend avg (http://free.avg.com) , because that’s what I use, and I have had good experiences with it.  It’s also pretty popular (#1 result in google if you type in “free antivirus”).  I used a product called Antivir from a company called avira, and the software was good as well, but every day when it updated the virus definitions, it would pop up a window to tell me what it was doing and the window would also have an add in it to get Antivir pro.  I do not like annoying things, and when my antivirus cannot update quietly, it has to go.  If you download and don’t like avg, feel free to look around for other antivirus software.