http://live.pirillo.com/ – There is no perfect anti-virus or anti-spyware program, but is there one that could be crowned the best? Turtleneck37 asks "I was just wondering what, in your opinion is the best Anti-Virus program and the best Anti-Spyware program."

Chris’s opinion is that there is no single best anti-virus or anti-spyware program. Your best bet is using the program that fits your computing habits. Sometimes it can be the one that is installed on your computer by default, and sometimes you’ll need to experiment to find the anti-virus that’s right for you. The chat room has a whole list of free anti-virus software recommendations for you:

Nod32:

Running separate applications for viruses, hackers, adware, and spyware can slow your PC, be difficult to manage, and provide questionable protection. Beware of large, bloated internet security suites that consume hundreds of megabytes on your PC. These typically exist because vendors have acquired products and ‘bundled’ them together. In contrast, ESET NOD32 was designed from the core as a single, highly-optimized engine that works as a unified Anti-Threat system to protect against a broad spectrum of malware. Viruses, worms, spyware, and other malicious attacks, which are constantly evolving. ESET NOD32 utilizes patent-pending ThreatSense Technology to detect tomorrow’s threats in real-time, by analyzing code execution for malicious intent – keeping you ahead of the malware-writers.

AVG Free Anti-Virus:

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is one of the most popular solutions to provide basic security protection on home and non-commercial PCs. We invite you to join the millions of users around the world who rely on AVG’s unique award-winning detection methods by downloading AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition.

Avast:

avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met! Our company offers the Home Edition free of charge, since, in our opinion, it is possible to avoid global virus spreading by efficient prevention; however, many users are not able to or do not want to pay for antivirus software.

This is only a small sampling of the anti-virus software out there. What do you recommend?

http://live.pirillo.com/ – Unwanted pop-ups are annoying and hard to get rid of. Kyleboose has a problem with pop-ups: "Hi Chris, I’m having problems with pop-ups in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I just installed a new security system which has a pop-up blocker but I still get them. Do you have any recommendations or any software that could help?"

Although pop-up blockers are nice to have, they’re really not needed, since both Firefox and Internet Explorer have built-in pop-up protection. In addition, your security suite has a pop-up blocker. So, there’s a good chance that your pop-up problem isn’t related to your browser but to your operating system. In other words: you may have a spyware problem.

Chris suggestions running the security suite’s anti-virus and spyware tools.

If you don’t have any anti-virus installed, we suggest trying either Nod32 or AVG Anti-virus. Chris also has some anti virus software suggestions you should check out.

Once your anti-virus software is finished running, your next step is to run some anti-spyware software. Both Spybot S&D and Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware come highly recommended from the chat room.

Do you have any suggestions for stopping stubborn pop-ups?