I’ve got a PC running Windows Vista (I know, I know … but I got a company discount on the purchase that made it about a quarter the price of an equivalent Mac.)

After experimenting unhappily for years with the top-rated free anti-spyware and anti-virus programs out there, as well as a year of paid (and pointless) Microsoft “One-care” , and dealing with all the slowdowns and software popups that they all generated, and still occasionally having my machine get possessed by demons, I paid for a year’s worth of Eset.

That was 7 months ago, and it’s been magic ever since.  Using Eset, which doesn’t noticeably slow down my computer, I would never even know that such a thing as spyware exists in the world.  Except that last night, after browsing on CNet, I stupidly left the website open and the internet connected while I just did some writing.  At one point, a little splash screen popped up from Eset, politely informing me that a Trojan downloader had tried to take up residence, but Eset had quarantined and deleted it.  In a few seconds, the splash screen went away. 

Eset doesn’t require any babysitting, any manual scans, any turning on or off, any attention at all. It updates itself daily and just quietly sits in the background, on guard.  I almost never actually pay for software, but this is one program that I’ll happily shell out for every year.