Ernie, the firewall approach is the best way by far to keep intruders out of your system. Antivirus software does not, but I would never surf without antivirus software either.
Yeah, it is a pain to have to configure a new rule everytime you want to access a new service of some sort from the internet, but once the rule is set up you don't have to mess with it again.
I'm using Norton's Firewall and find it easy to use (I may be a network engineer but I'm by no means a sofware genius nor do I have an abundance of spare time so ease of use is important). Other people I know use Zone Alarm and seem to like it. There are similar products out there.
I can't tell you how many times my firewall has stopped intruders from getting in. The software reports whenever a hacker is stopped. The firewall logs include the IP address of the would be intruder and the type of attack. You can then forward that info to your ISP if you want to pursue the matter.
As far as other "cute" tools that are offered whenever you visit certain pages, avoid them. One is named after a large reptile native to Florida. Everyone has seen it if they have spent any time at all on the internet. Well, this one will hijack your browser by resetting your home page to something other than what you had originally. It also replaces paid ads on web sites with it's own ads for it's own sponsors. So what happens is revenues are lost by the web page owners.
For example, Club Cobra for instance has sponsors who place their ads on this website. Whenever an ad is clicked on you're redirected to that sponsor's web page. The sponsors registers a hit on their site, and revenue is generated for Club Cobra to keep it operating.
What the software mentioned above does, is replace the ads with its own sponsors ads so the income intended for the legitimate host website is lost.
Read the following:
http://www.cexx.org/gator.htm
There are others out there more insidious than this.
One called LOP or C2.lop will install shortcuts to porn sites and an auotmatic dialer with 900 numbers to porn sites. The next thing you know, you've got this enormous phone bill for calls to the Dominican Republic. The good thing is this works only if you have a modem, but there are still tons of modem users.
The key here is protect yourselves. Take a proactive approach now and you'll save yourselves a lot of aggravation later.
I'm outta here.
Bill