Smarty wrote:

Get and read the latest issue of Consumer Reports. They did an
extensive comparison and rated many antivirus suites both free and
for sale. They liked BitDefender very much, were surprisingly down on
Norton/Symantec (the suite I use) and also down on Trend PCCillin,
the product I previously used but found way too slow and buggy.

Smarty

Norton and McAfee have both received a lot of bad press in recent years over
their buggy, intrusive software and very poor customer service. I've heard
so many horror stories that I would never use either one again. Norton has
been trying to clean up their act lately but I see no reason to go back to
using their products when there are superior alternatives available.

Kaspersky is highly rated by lots of IT types. I recommend the free home
version of Avast! which I got after reading a lot of positive reviews also
by IT-savvy folks. You can't beat free, at least if it works properly, and
Avast! has worked well for me.

http://www.avast.com/