Optimal anti malware/spyware/virus software and their necessity

Before I list the softwares in consideration, are computer protection suites even necessary when matched against freeware? If they are, which one of these 5 suites do you recommend and why: AVG, BitDefender, Kaspersky, MacAfee, and TrendMicro. I chose the first 4 because they were among the higher rated in Consumer Report; TrendMicro was included because I have had decent personal experience with it. Thanks for your consideration.

 

Freeware is fine with safe browsing and file access habits. If you click every link and execute every file without a second thought, nothing will protect you against zero-day attacks.

 

What is zero day attacks?I apologise in advance if it has been asked before....

 

Check this Wiki p age for an explanation.

 

every random keylogger,stealer,trojaner is fully undedected against anti viruses these days.. the only thing that will save you then and dedect it will be stuff like the proactive-security in the kaspersky suite. Also the white-list which automatically checks files for be original or not is usefull.

E.g. you download ccleaner (not from the original page) and kaspersky asks for the level of allowence of this file. Then you would already realise that its not the original ccleaner.exe because kaspersky would automatically give the file all rights if it was the original one (if u set kaspersky up that way).

Another important thing is the firewall... dont know how easy it is to bypass firewalls but in any case it gives alot of protection when a random setup.exe suddenly wants to send files from your pc.

from what read/hear NIS or Norton360 should be good. KIS2010 has some bugs and the 2011 even more