I did run Avira briefly a year or two back, but found it didn't detect anything that AVG couldn't. No worse, but no better... I may well be wrong though?

I thought a switch to a paid AV would be worthwhile given the amount of "risky" browsing I did... worst decision I ever made. BitDefender seemed to have mostly good reviews, but I've had nothing but trouble with it, numerous bugs, no customer support and protection not much better than any of the free ones. And the number of times I've lost that protection and needed to cleanly reinstall beggars belief - on my laptop (running Vista) it has never lasted 3 weeks without developing a fault of some sort.

I was considering NOD32 for my new system - do you think Avira and saving the money would be a better option?

(Apologies for veering this thread further OT!)

Avira Free is worth it. I've been using it for more than 2 year and never had a single infection. I used AVG before but I got hit by 3 nasties so I changed it. Anyway it's still user preference, if you think your secured with it why change, mine is only a suggestion. Bty I don't I don't have third party anti-malware/anti-spyware/firewall on my system. But don't try this setup though.

Thanks Julio,
Some good apps and advice!

here's my list of free (mostly) software for you (not exactly in this order)
1)Avira
2)Paint.net
3)Foxit Reader
4)KMPlayer (i think it's better than VLC Player when playing videos but you could try both and choose one)
5)OpenOffice.org
6)Firefox
7)CCleaner
8)Winrar (it's not free but there's an trial version you can use)
9)Winamp (nobody suggested it? or is it considered a default program?)
10)Nero (also not free)