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Protecting home computers and networks is simple.

First and foremost, you need to keep your computer from exploding. Nobody wants a toasted computer. Make sure that you have a quality power supply.

A UPS is a good idea if you're protecting an important investment, but it's really only useful if you discover your house off and your computer on. If the cost of a UPS is too much of a hit to your pocketbooks, you probably don't need one.

Dust is the enemy. Heat is the enemy. Water is the enemy. Keep your computer in a cool, dry, dust-free environment. Try not to keep your computer right on a carpeted floor. Vacuum and dust. A smokin' hot day can fry your computer's poor, unsuspecting motherboard, so either use air-conditioning or just recognize when it's probably too hot to play Halo 2.

Once the physical side of your computer's protected, it's time to think about protecting your software.

Most devotees will recommend that you get a firewall, a anti-virus scanner, an anti-spyware suite, a spam-blocker, an e-mail checker, a daily checkup from antivirus professionals, and an emergency freeze-chamber for your PC in case anything goes wrong.

The whole set of system protection tools, though, be it a Norton or McAfee product, can slow your system down by as much as 50% and are only known to catch between 3% and 40% of all known viruses.

When it comes down to it, that's a high cost for some pretty piddly protection.

For computer protection, I'd recommend a few small things.

First of all, a simple, free firewall- ZoneAlarm works nicely. If you're behind a router that provides NAT (Network Address Translation) on a network that only you can connect to, you don't even need a firewall. A properly configured router is a very effective firewall on it's own.

Second of all, stop using Internet Explorer. Browse the net with FireFox or Opera, using as few extensions as possible.

Thirdly, make sure that your Windows installation completely and consistently updated and upgraded. Whenever a major security vulnerability is found within a Windows product, Microsoft goes about patching it as soon as they can. This means, however, that crackers know about that vulnerability, too, and they'll be exploiting it.

A copy of Windows XP that's a year behind on it's updates, left on an open network for even a few hours can contract all sorts of nasties that you don't even want to think about dealing with.

Finally, and this is the most important guideline of them all, never open an executable file from an

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