>>>We are an AVG reseller (have been for years), but now we recommend Microsoft Security Essentials - free, lightweight, and accurate.
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>>I have heard good things about MSE. Now if I can just get past the mental hurdle of trusting Microsoft for the security of my computer....
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>Speaking of which, I'm looking for a freebie firewall. Always had one - first it was the AtGuard on NT4 and W2k, but it didn't want to work on XP. So I switched to SyGate (later bought by, of course, Symantec and turned into ZoneAlarm), and that worked fine until I went 64-bit.
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>Now I'm looking for the next one, which needs to satisfy two conditions:
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>- price: free or up to $30
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>- can set the rules both ways, and will ask me first time about everything.
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>You can see why I wouldn't trust Microsoft with that. If it was so open to suggestions as I want it, it would alert everyone whenever a .msi calls something.microsoft.com...

I remember using AtGuard too - it's always been my favorite firewall - although as you said XP killed it. There was a hack to get it to work on XP for a while - but I think the first XP service pack killed that as well. Norton bought it and then of course screwed it all up by taking away the dashboard thingy - which to me was one of it's best features. As matter of fact I've been writing my own firewall and I've been using that layout as a model :)