New laptop, which software?

I think all your friend’s recommendations are excellent, except I don’t know anything about Cleanup Utilities.

Good alternatives to AVG are Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials, but all three are about equal.

Consider TrueCrypt, if you want to encrypt information (or even the whole hard drive). Even if your laptop were stolen, the thieves wouldn’t be able to read encrypted files.

I would delete all the Norton products. Removing the commercial anti-virus software is the first step I take with a new machine. They virtually ARE viruses they way they slow down your machine and beg for money with pop-ups.

I have been happy and clean with Microsoft Security Essentials but as an added caution I run spybot and malaware from time to time.

Avira is always near/at the top for anti-virus. I like 99.4% detection better than 94.5%. I do not trust AVG at all after a bad experience, and the last few tests I’ve seen confirm that mistrust.

Spybot is good because of the realtime protection that some others lack, but you should also get another on-demand scanner like Malwarebytes.

CCleaner and Defraggler are also “must have“tools.

Norton has greatly improved its software recently. It’s one of the highest rated and efficient AV programs now. But the downside is that Norton’s own software nags you to upgrade and buy add-ons all the time…it’s like you buy A/V to stop the adware, and your A/V is adware.

If you want free, use AVG as your A/V, and Spybot as your anti-spyware, and Comodo as your firewall.

Or get Linux and stop worrying about viruses altogether.

@HungryGuy, not quite. Linux can still get viruses. none have been found doesn’t mean that they’re not out there. still need one for Linux.

@reijinni True, it is possible, but unlikely. That said, duping a user into installing malware themselves is relatively easy regardless of OS.

@reijinni I wouldn’t be wasting precious processor cycles, and memory running all of my software through the equivalent of a TSA nude-body scanner if there were currently no known threats. If I were running linux I would definitely not waste those resources. The other way to think of it is that you can get a cheaper machine and not run malware detection and get a similar performance to a more expensive one running tons of crap in the background. The reality is that the Linux community is very good about keeping the platform secure, and if something nasty did break out, in a worst case scenario, you’re probably just going to be reloading from a backup anyways, the cost benefit is pretty obvious imo.

I keep a CD with what I consider the bare-essentials for setting up a new system, just in case I have a hard drive crash or a I need to set up a new system for a friend. This is what I keep on it, in the approximate order that I usually install it:

Windows security roll-up of whatever version I’m using

Spybot S&D

AVG Free

ZoneAlarm (Although I am getting increasingly irritated with the cretinous and intrusive behaviour of CheckPoint, such as their unavoidable pop-up spamming and nagware. I am considering making a switch to Komodo.)

Pegasus Email client

Firefox 3 + FEBE backup of my configurations, passwords, bookmarks, and add-ons

mIRC (Useful for getting real-time assistance if you have trouble with any of your installs. Most IRC networks have a help channel.)

WinAmp 2.76 (The last pre-AOL – and thus stable and bloat-free – version.)

VideoLAN (VideoLAN will play almost anything natively, which is very useful when you’ve got a virgin system without any codec packs installed.)

uTorrent

ACDSee 2.43 (Early, bloat-free, relatively nag-free version of my favourite image viewer.)

@SmashTheState I’m not sure about a four-year-old version of Firefox, especially since the FEBE link goes to a version of FEBE that requires Firefox version 4.0+. I’m kind of curious why you went that way.

Media Player Classic: Home Cinema, and XnView are how I roll for video and images. What are type thoughts on those?