After reading the “Powerful Protection” Doctor question in the July issue, I started wondering what kind of performance hit I was taking from the plethora of security programs on my system. I have two Dell machines: an XPS-600 and an older Dimension 8300 (Windows XP Home, SP3 and IE7). They are connected to the net through a Linksys WRT150N router. Both units also have AOL 9.1, McAfee Security Suite, and SpySweeper. I know this is overkill, but I have no idea what to keep or what to disable.
—Loren
Click for Loren's answer. After the jump!