Hi media_luvvie, welcome to our site :)
Don't worry about being confused when it comes to trying to figure out which programs you should use to protect yourself from all of the possible threats out there; given the huge amount of "nasties" that Windows users can suffer from, your question is well worth asking.
Use McAfee until your subscription runs out if you'd like. I wouldn't suggest renewing it after that though, and nor would I suggest switching over to Norton's products as an alternative. The offerings from McAfee and Norton are both "pay for" products to begin with, and Norton's programs have the same sort of subscription-renewal plan as McAfee's. In addition, there are other (free) programs which often do a better job.
My suggestions would be:
1. Installable anti-virus programs:
AVG: http://www.grisoft.com/doc/40/lng/us/tpl/tpl01
Avast!: http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html
2. Free online anti-virus scanners:
http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus.html
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp?cid=9914
http://www.pandasoftware.com/active...n_principal.htm
http://www.ravantivirus.com/scan/
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php
3. Some specific "anti-spyware" detection/removal/protection programs:
ewido Security Suite - http://www.ewido.net/en/download/
Microsoft Anti-Spyware beta - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en
Ad Aware SE Personal - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/
SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html
IESpyad - https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/resource.htm
4. Firewall programs:
Kerio Personal Firewall - http://www.kerio.com/kpf_download.html
Zone Alarm - the direct link to the free version isn't working here for some reason, but you can get to it by starting here:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/application?namespace=zls_catalog&origin=global.jsp&event=link1.skuList&&zl_catalog_view_id=201&lid=nav_db
