Originally Posted by
lamminium 
01. Adblock Plus, WoT
02. Avira Personal
03. Malwarebytes, Emsisoft Antimalware, Javacool SpywareBlaster
04. Comodo Firewall
I'm not a fan of NoScript because I like normal looking websites. Albeit not 100% foolproof, commonsense surfing habit helps.
I don't suggest people solely rely on WoT to rate the websites for them. I have encountered various legitimate sites with bad ratings. Having said that, WoT adds another layer of browsing security because it does correctly rate a lot of websites. So it's not perfect, it's good enough to use.
I used to have Avast because of its multiple layers of shields: web, file, script, behaviour. However, the latest version (v7) causes problems with Comodo (subtle because it renders one of Comodo's most important features useless, i.e. if you terminate a connection or block a program in Comodo with Avast installed, the connection or the said program is still able to communicate with the Internet). I elected to keep Comodo because right now it's the best firewall on Windows x64 (
proof).
Avira is currently the best free antivirus (
proof) that has a local definition. You may try to want Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition which delivers respectable protection (
report).
SpywareBlaster is a passive blocker so it won't impact your system resources. Malwarebytes and Emsisoft have free versions which are essentially on-demand scanners. In this way, they act as second opinion references.
I set my security arsenal this way because I use my laptop for more than just gaming. I work and study on it so reformatting it every time it has an infection is a straight no. No security software is 100% effective but it's just ridiculous not to run any security programs in real time; say, instead of manually cleaning out an infection which is otherwise pre-empted by an antivirus and a firewall, you'd save some time doing some other useful things. Also, think about the damage the hidden malware has done until, say, you run those on-demand scanners which are seemingly what you only have. Keyloggers, Trojans, rootkits don't necessarily scream to you that they're there and your system may still run normally for all it's worth.
Note: "you" here is used to label a generic PC user.
