Hi, everyone:

My new PC came with some sort of MacAfee software (proction center). I also have my own Norton 360 and Norton Systemworks as well as Iolo's System Mechanics.

In the VISTA system, Microsoft seems to have its own protection software installed.

Can they work together?

I must had asked this question before but that was comparing between different brands. I first noticed there was some problem when I tried to install a new Norton AntiVirus to the system with Norton Systemworks Premier. The NSW had an older version of Norton antivirus with it but installing the new AV only gave me 8 months of subscription instead of a year.

Now this time I was trying to install the new Norton 360 to the computer. BeepBeepBeep! The 360 asked me to remove Norton Systemworks Premier first! I also have a newer version of Norton Systemworks but now I really need to think twice before installing that.

Surprising enough the 360 was installed to the new computer (already have MacAfee) with no problem at all.

On iolo's site there is this chart: http://www.iolo.com/sm/7/std/

System Mechanic seems to be the best choice of all. And it's FAR. Link to deal.

But would they work together, that is a question.

I beleive these can all work together, but you are being overly redundant. Imagine you download some program and its scanned by Norton, then by Mcaffee, and then by the Windows Defender. Your computer would slow down considerably. If I were you, I would uninstall everything and turn off Windows Defender, then use only one Anti-Virus program. System Mechanic from what I know is not an anti-virus program, but more of an optimization utility (aspects of Norton System Works also do optimization). I know that Norton is bloatware and would not use it. I personally use Kaspersky 6.0, but I heard Bit Defender is also good.

Thanks for the warshed. I am using Norton just because it was FAR (yet I needed to call and argue about those rebates).

One thing I now know about N360 has a lot of problems. One, everytime it applies an update, you need to restart the computer. What if it has two or three updates a day? You will spend at least a good half an hour everyday just to save work, close window and reboot system.

Two, that god-dang "Fraud Mornitoring" function just slow down your internet. It takes about 5 to 10 seconds everytime you click on any link in any webpage just to determine that is not fraud. And to the new IE, we all know the web browser has this kind of annoying response delay when your page is loading. These two delay combines together? I feel my high-speed internet is back to 1997 since the multi-window, multitasking becomes a nightmare!

Norton 360 basically is the same as Systemworks so you don't want to have both on the same machine, that is why the install wanted you to delete the other first.

SystemMechanic can be installed along with any of the others and used as a utility suite.

Pitch all of that crap and just install AVG, available from free.grisoft.com. I don't even enable Defender on Vista, but it might be a good idea to download Spybot and Ad-Aware and run scans with them on a regular basis if you don't.

I concur. Windows Defender is crap.