Should I pay my annual subscription to McAfee for Security Center?

Or download a free AntiVirus %26 Firewall?

I have a home use P4 computer running XP

Should I pay my annual subscription to McAfee for Security Center?firewall

Personally, I'm not too keen on McAfee, the only one of their products I use is siteadvisor ( http://www.siteadvisor.com )...

It has happened to me several times that I went to fix a friends computer and McAfee (which they had installed and paid for) didn't manage to get rid of the virus/trojan that had infected the pc. The next thing I usually try is downloading AVG, and believe it or not, 80% of the time it manages to get rid of it.

For firewall, well it depends. Zonealarm for example (one of the most well-known free firewalls) is well known for eating up system resources, and especially for slowing down the system startup.. But it is quite a good firewall.

Comodo personal is also very good (and free).

Personally, I just use the built in windows firewall. Many wannabe geeks tell me I'm an idiot for doing that, but they don't realise I have many other layers of security set up on my pc so that I don't have a huge need for outbound protection. (If you're confused by this: the main gripe many people have with the windows firewall is that it only monitors incoming traffic, not outbound. So if you have a piece of malware on your pc, it can connect to the internet..) My philosophy is to keep my pc clean in the first place and it has served me well over the last three years..