Getting your PC online without any form of protection is potentially dangerous with all the threats present in the Internet today. A couple of years ago we were only concerned with viruses and how to prevent them from infecting our PC.

My pc is quite old and I have been told that having anti spyware installed on it will slow it down by at least 25%. I am thinking what is the lesser of two evils! No anti spyware or invasion by spyware! As I am fairly new to computers I am at the moment being fairly cautious about downloading things. Advice much appreciated. I am on XP proffesional.