Security and Antivirus

I haven't used either of those two myself products but they'll both do pretty much the same job.

This seems to be a common question on this forum and I think it'd be better if there was something more useful we could point people to than lots of "I use Norton and it's great" style posts -- Not that that's entirely a bad thing, but everyone seems to develop their own idea of what works best for themselves.

The important thing to remember with firewalls is that they're not the be all and end all of security.

If you understand the actual threats to your machine you'll do a much better job of keeping it safe. I remember dealing with users who'd blocked pretty much anything from connecting to their machine. There's not much point in filtering several thousand ports then wondering why you can't view websites

Before you buy one of these products it'd be a good idea to have a basic, general understanding of how TCP/IP works. I'm sure the defaults will work fine for most people but to know exactly just much or how little a firewall can protect you, you need to know what's happening underneath.

You also need to be aware of how malicious programs can get onto your machine. Generally it's through security problems in email clients, web browsers, etc. Even if you are running one of these products you'll still need to keep your software patched and up to date. That means (I'm assuming you're using a Microsoft Windows flavour from the links you give) keeping up to date with http://www.windowsupdate.com/
and whatever other software you use (including your firewall/anti-virus software ).

I've tried to find some links to basic introductions to TCP/IP but I'm not having much luck at finding anything suitable.

If any of you have links you find useful for explaining networking/security basics, post them up and we can make this a sticky.

Meanwhile I'll keep digging...