Essential Vista apps and good antivirus recommendations?

[Fallinangel]

Hi,

Can anyone please point me out to some essential apps that I need on Vista!?

I haven't used Windows for about five years now, and I'm not very familiar with the OS anymore.
I'm going to install Vista for my gaming needs!
Apart from that, I will perform some basic tasks on it, like writing text, emails, downloading from torrents, from usenet, web surfing, listening to music, watching movies (all kinda formats, DVDs, and BDs), etc.
What about security apps? Which ones do I really need?

Furthermore, is there a good Windows antivirus (that doesn't mess up the Bootcamp drivers)?

Thanks for you help.

[pol0001]

Here is a list of apps you might find useful:

- VLC
- OpenOffice or MS Office
- MS OneCare (allround suite from MS: Backup, Antivirus, Firewall, Tuneup)
- iTunes :apple:
- Firefox / Thunderbird

I use MS OneCare on my Bootcamp partition and it works more than fine.

[schmintan]

i use etrust antivirus and it seems to wrok fine, so far i have not had a virus on both my laptops, my windows laptop, and my MBP running vista.

[ayzee]

Avg antivirus and zonealarm firewall are available from their websites for absolutely free. I use these on my so partition and they work perfectly well

[timswim78]

Avg antivirus and zonealarm firewall are available from their websites for absolutely free. I use these on my so partition and they work perfectly well

If you are running Vista, AVG is known to cause problems with NetFlix. So, if you plan on using NetFlix, I would try Avira http://www.free-av.com/