Is it better to buy on line protection or are free downloads just as good?

It's almost time for my anti virus and spyware subscription to expire. I'm not sure if I should renew or just use free on line protection?

Is it better to buy on line protection or are free downloads just as good?antivirus scan

If your a home user: NEVER PAY FOR IT!

I like AVG FREE. The antivirus updates and runs at a time you choose (I do mine when I sleep) and the Spyware works good too.

Is it better to buy on line protection or are free downloads just as good?computer security

AVG is a good choice. Ad-Aware is not exactly an anti-virus however, and it does not monitor your network traffic. Ad-Aware is only good after the fact. It does not prevent anything, it just helps you remove spyware and annoying things of that nature.
Depends what your using, if your using norton, might want to consider a different anti-virus. If you decide to get a free one from offline. Ad-Aware(not to be confused with adware) is a really good one that i use. If you plan on using a subscription anti-virus, Kaspersky is the absolute best there is. Hope this helped.
Its a choice that you must make, but I want you to know that certain FREE programs are just as good as the paid ones. No matter what you choose to do make sure that the one you already have install be removed (uninstall) before installing another one (if it is different from what you already have) Here is a link to a good antivirus program that I recomend and others on this site recomend also. (http://free.grisoft.com) this is AVG free antivirus.