Article: Essential free software for students

I'd personally never suggest GIMP. It's a poor substitute for Photoshop and I dislike it immensely. I'd take Paint.NET over it. There is a web alternative to Photoshop (http://pixlr.com/editor/) not too shabby.

That said, I'd suggest sneaking in Malwarebytes along side Avast!. That way you take care of both the AV and Malware/Adware side of things.

I wouldn't suggest using Avast as an anti-virus, it's free,but it's not very good. There are a LOT of other free anti-virus software out there which are better and less annoying. Personally I use Microsoft Security Essentials, it's worked for me so far, but in terms of viruses, just browse the internet intelligently and think about what you're downloading first, or what sites you're viewing, and you should be fine.

What about AVG Free, would that be any good? Has a couple of recommendations to use AVG from other people.

Also need an AV that is very lightweight for my old XP machine - currently have Avira Antivirus on it, want something better but only have 1GB RAM total.

Will also try out MSE as I have had it with McAffee, hogging my processor!

Honestly, I'm not the most knowledgeable about the topic, but it should be fine.

What about AVG Free, would that be any good? Has a couple of recommendations to use AVG from other people.

Also need an AV that is very lightweight for my old XP machine - currently have Avira Antivirus on it, want something better but only have 1GB RAM total.

Will also try out MSE as I have had it with McAffee, hogging my processor!

Time is running out for Windows XP machines, definition updates ran out three days ago for Microsoft Security Essentials for XP.
I don't know many Anti Virus software packages, which are good, that support XP.
It's not really a worth investment for them as there are so many security holes now, with no security updates or hotfixes, you're asking for problems.

If you're using Vista or later, I recommend Kaspersky, it's one of the only good ones I've seen, besides ESET.
The only free AV I would recommend is MSE.

Thanks for the advice - other people had told me about Kaspersky so when my mcafee runs out I may well give that a go!

As for windows XP... need it for compatibility issues; some of my programs/games won't run on windows 7 whatsoever (yet they work fine on XP).

Do you need to use the internet for it?
You could dual boot it rather than using two computers, it would be far better to do so.

But this laptop didn;t come with a windows disc so how am I supposed to get windows XP onto my main laptop to dual boot?

That said, I'd suggest sneaking in Malwarebytes along side Avast!. That way you take care of both the AV and Malware/Adware side of things.

If you know the product key, you can download an iso file of XP online, boot it to a USB stick and install it that way.

Any notable antiviruses other than Avast to use? I'm getting fed up of mcafee taking up too much of my PC's resources.
Also is Avast any good, and is it lightweight? (i.e. light on system resources)

But will this mean that I can no longer use my old laptop/it will come up saying invalid windows?

Further, will dual booting cause any issues with my current windows 7 OS?

I'd rather err on the side of caution...

If you want a lightweight AV - Avast is great, the Pro version is even better and only costs around £20 for a 1 year subscription. You should use it alongside Malwarebytes. Those two are usually enough to keep your computer running fine.

edit: others have recommended the same