If you dislike spending $70 on a drab product like antivirus software or bristle at the intrusiveness of security software suites, this story’s for you.

Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro has just reviewed the major security packages from the likes of McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro, and he doesn’t really like any of them. He finds the antivirus-spyware-phishing-firewall suites expensive, too taxing on your computer, and sometime ineffective.

Pegoraro says the better solution is to mix and match free security tools you can get through Windows or on the Internet. These include Windows Defender, AVG, Avast, and the firewall built into Windows XP.

Full story here.

[tags]Washington Post, free, software, security, ineffective, gift ideas, cookie, helpful hints[/tags]