[Monica]

I use IE all the time (even if we have the netscape browser, we never use it). We simply installed Google toolbar (comes with pop-up blocker), had Ad-Aware by Lavasoft which I love, Avast (hate it.... it only finds 'virusss' when some other virus protection program is running to clear out the viruses), and Webroot Spy Sweeper (comes on a disk, so you have to buy it, but it's very good as well! It can easily do the job of Avast in protecting any new items that can possibly get onto the computer and do the job of Ad-Aware when you want it to).

With the Google Toolbar though, it has drastically removed the amount of pop-ups while web surfing, and you can even make it so that it accepts pop-ups from certain sites (such as BirdBoard) so I have no problem with IE.