A few months ago I upgraded my home computer from Norton AV 2004 (which worked just fine) to 2006. Following installation, something was familiar to me, and I said 'what is it exactly?'. Then I remembered - NAV 2006 reminded me of early Norton System Works - you know, the world's best marketed virus? The software that utilized 60% of your computer's resources "making sure everything was alright"?
My predicament on the flip...
It seems like NAV 2006 wants to "do things" for me. Like pitching fits because Windows Update is not set to "Blind Obedience". Like giving me a choice of an irritating flashing icon in the icon bar, or a flashing block in the taskbar, whichever I prefer, but not neither. Like checking things - lots of things apparently - before letting anything else start up, even my firewall. My high-powered media system that used to go from power off to operational in 30 seconds now takes about 3 minutes to be usable.
I know there are plenty of alternatives out there: McAfee, Trend Micro, Panda among them, but I haven't kept up with who is best. I'm not concerned about the cost, I just want something that works well and is fast, performs basic anti-virus tasks and doesn't insist on cleaning it's ears before doing anything else each time I power up.
A plea for alms, Oh Great Gurus of the softer wares! Your recommendations please for anti-virus software so I can kick Symantec to the curb?
Update:
Sounds like the preponderance is for Trend and AVG.
And by the way, for the geeks among us, the system is home built, Soyo KT600 based MB with an AMD Athlon 3200 processor, overclocked; 1GB Corsair ram, 4-drive 0+1 RAID on a Highpoint controller, plus a safety fallback standalone drive; two optical drives; AV bridge for real time video capture; WIN XP Pro fully patched; Zone Alarm Pro and sitting behind a NAT wall. Oh, and about 9 cooling fans. : )
Update II:Thanks, everyone.