I'm using Comodo's Internet Security Premium product at the moment it's free to use and have had no issues using it with Windows XP, so far.

There are free to use standalone antivirus products too.

In reply to a post by blackmesa8:

I wont touch Nortan used them many years ago and it was an insane system hog back then and i cant imagine its got better.

It has! Modern Norton NAV & NIS are no longer system hogs.

An update on my research on this.
I think i am going to give ESET NOD32 Antivirus a try. All review sites and benchmarks and customer reviews seem to indicate that ESET is either the least heavy or among the very least heavy on system resources there is. Alot of there marketing is based on that fact too but review sites etc also seem to support it.
Anyone here ever used ESET or had any experience with ESET?

Indeed. Norton will be one of the candidates when I look around for the next security suite.

Hi
As said Bit Defender is very good however I have been using and testing Webroot Secure Anywhere 8 on both Win 7 and Win 8 systems in both x86 and X64 format and I must say it is surprisingly good !

I have been using it on a 180 day trial ! sorry I have lost the link but I would do a web search for it . You have nothing to loose and there is also lots of 30 and 15 days one out there also

Well i have gone with the 30 day free trial of ESET nod 32. Ill test it for 3-5 days and if it gives no problems pay for it.
After Avast i must say i have def noticed a decrease in boot time and a few large programs loading. Steam games seem to be loading noticeably faster too.
One bad thing so far is full system scans take longer than Avast did but thats not something im really bothered about i am liking its overall system performance increase.
If anyone is interested i can update this post with what i decided and if i encountered any issues in 4 days when i decide if i am going to keep it.

ESET Smart Security here with no problems

I use avast free and cant say that ive notcied any slow downs in performance on any of the 4 windows 7 machines i have it installed on which are all running on different specs

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Jul-13 01:33:05)

I use ESET anti-virus on ten different machines of varying ages and configurations. It doesn't seem to impact performance.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Indeed. Norton will be one of the candidates when I look around for the next security suite.

Everytime someone mentions Norton we get the replies on all forums of "it was grim 10 years ago so can't have changed"........people really are strange!

Anyway
Once you are using NIS remember never to renew via the Norton site.
Its far cheaper to buy a new disk/licence Number and "renew" by enteirng up the new licence number into the software when asked.
However note carefully that you need to do this on the last day of the expiry of the old licence as renewing in this way will NOT credit you with the final unused days of your previous subcription. It starts a new year from the day you entered up the the new licence code.

Re Bit Defender - google bitdefender slows interet throughput
have they fixed it yet?

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Jul-13 10:52:48)