Norton is good because it has updates and it protects you from some of the worst viruses but you need more than just it. I would also get Hijackthis The Cleaner Mcafree Zonealarm Pro (firewall)
idk if anyone said it but get zonealarm or sygate personal firewall sygate is free but zone alarm costs money
no se personal u guys say it works it doesnt work at all it doesn't find anything i have used it and i no alot of people who won't use it because it doesn't find anything use microsoft anti spyware [/b][/quote] WTF are you talking about, I use Ad-Aware, and it works great, I also use MS antispyware which works good also, but there is nothing wrong with ad-aware. ^ and two posts above, Zone Alarm PRO icosts money The basic version is free
Norton 2005 is considered the best avalible. Panda antivirus is pretty hot aswell. OS would be Windows XP professional. It has a few flaws but most of them can be corrected trough downloads from www.windows.com You can use linux if you want but I am not much of a linux fan, and never used it for an extended period of time to be honest. Ad aware and spy bot are both good programs for removing cookies, spy programs and stuff that you generaly don't want on your comp. Those two are freeware but if you don't care about the cost you can upgrade ad aware to get a few more features. Service pack 2 is both good and bad, If you don't know a whoole lot of computers I would say go for it. The office package is good to have aswell, you might not use them dialy but they can come in realy handy sometimes. And ofcourse never to be forgotten. Adobe photoshop CS2.
First off never use Norton, a lot of people think it's great but there is much better software out there. Avast! Professional edition is twenty times better. Norton actually allowed more viruses to come onto my computer then it did to to stop them and of course none of them were picked up <_<. Sygate firewall is great too. I never tried ZoneAlarm but I like Sygate anyway it's simple to use and secure.