Wanted: Security setup opinions - antispy/malware reccommendations?

DW indeed is almost popup-less, but I tried running AKLT.exe under DW supervision and on 2 tests it gave a pop-up and asked if I wanted to allow or deny the keylogging.
So in certain cases DW does show pop-ups.

 

Yes, it shows popups in case DW can't automatically make a desicion if this behaviour dangerous or legitimate.

 

Hi , PERFECT SOLUTION for SPEED : Process Lasso . Thanks

 

Sorry about that TOS violation, basically the author said that turning off DNS caching on a home machine has little or no effect. His reasoning:

hosts file is loaded into memory at startup, not every time you visit a site

He also mentions that since hops are measured in milliseconds, if you are seeing a 5 second delay then your problem is probably with the ISP, not hosts.

I found a smaller hosts file for adblocking (~43kB) but it didn't really do much for me. Tried IE7Pro and IEPlus and didn't like either of them (both left a bunch of crap in Application Data and my registry after uninstall too).

I switched back to a large hosts file and turned DNS caching off and things seem to be faster, especially due to the fact that all ads are skipped over. Hope I am not causing infrastructure issues querying too much ;P

@Kees:
Thanks for those app recommendations, I'll check them out! Probably not DW, since I am cheap

I am still only using AntiVir Premium and have had no issues so far. But, trying to run a tight ship, you know.