Practical is sexy so here's a practical post. We all know it's important to keep your computer bug-free so you don't find yourself losing your pieces or having your personal emails sent out to everyone in your address book. But which anti-virus programs are the best combination of effectiveness, convenience and price?

After some perusing, it seems that Norton and AVG get the most votes for effectiveness, with AVG getting a few extra points for usability and being free (although some users say you get what you pay for.) ClamWin gets high recommendations as a free program for Windows from Miss Gina at LifeHacker, who recommends installing it once your computer's built-in antivirus system starts sending you those scary messages about its powers' expiration date.

However! You computer is not completely safe with just an antivirus program. If you want to use extra protection (and you always do), you also want to download a spyware program (like Spybot or Ad-Aware) There are more spyware programs recommended here.

Plus something that cleans up your email, like MailWasher You might also want to avoid using Microsoft Outlook, which seems to be especially vulnerable to viruses; try a program like Eudora instead. Find additional mail-cleansing program recos here. Hopefully in the future protectors will include all three in one, so busy people don't need to use up extra space and take the time to run extra programs.