Quote Originally Posted by Swish
I downloaded Microsoft's beta version of their anti-virus software at the insistance of the IT pros from my company, and it cleaned out what Spybot and Ad-Aware could not, so I'm sold. I run it automatically every day and, so far, nothing bad has happened to my PC or company-issued laptop. If I'm on their network, no problemo, but when I travel, I'm often on hotel websites that are far from secure.

Swish
Anti-spyware, anti-popups, and anti-virus are three different things, albeit related. You should use all three. I block popups with Opera and Firefox; keep my anti-virus up-to-date, and block spyware with Spybot Search & Destroy, although I'm not as good with that last one as I probably should be, probably because I don't download software any more. I really need to get around to that.