The programs you listed are pretty good ones, (I'm also running vista), might I also ask If you are running the 32 or 64 bit version? As for the built in protection, I assume you are referring to windows defender and windows firewall? I've never had windows defender pick much of anything up, but it gets updates frequently enough and it can't really hurt to leave it on. As for windows firewall, I find it to be quite effective as long as you don't mind not having outbound protection (which I don't really find very necessary if you keep the malware off the computer in the first place). If you're running one of the 32 bit versions of vista, avira, found at
http://www.avira.com/en/support/windows ... pport.html, is a fairly decent free alternative to AVG and it has some pretty high detection rates. If you go with avira don't go nuts with the settings, meaning don't crank it up too high, particularly the heuristics. It never hurts to have some on-demand spyware scanners lying about, I recommend spybot, found at safer-networking.org, avg antispyware, found at free.grisoft.com, and superantispyware, found at superantispyware.com.