Microsoft Security Essentials.

 

Avast! or AVG Free.

 

The experts all say you should never actually rely on just one as if it can never miss anything.

But my round 1 choice has been Avast and likely will be till I say otherwise.

And when you consider all the porn sites I visit, and all the questionable downloads I download, and I am not suffering from any of it, I think I can say that Avast is what you need.

 

NOD32 and Symantec Endpoint Protection work TOGETHER without major hog or system instability. Tested over 2 years. There's a catch though, add an exception into NOD32's list for C:\ProgramData\Symantec\SRTSP\Quarantine\*.* or you will have an endless quarantine loop whenever SEP quarantines something because NOD will pick it up.

 

I have used Eset NOD32 Smart Security for three or so years already and I can honestly say it's the best antivirus I have used compared to Kaspersky, Panda, Norton, Bitdefender, etc. I have never tried Avira or Avast and I cannot stand up for them but, I would definitely recommend Eset NOD32

 

From what I've heard, supposably the Security Accounts Control on Win7 is one of the best, if not best virus prevention system when its on maximum protection because it often freezes your computer's processes before anything can happen. Unfortunately its also annoying as hell. Imagine having to click a confirmation popup every 15 seconds for everyything you do. "Computer is trying to display start menu, Allow?", its terrible. But that super security means nothing if you keep mindlessly clicking "Allow" without reading what it is asking you.
It also slows down installing games. When I tried installing Ragnarok, UAC would scan the entire 1GB installer in the background, so if I double clicked the installer, I would wait like 4 minutes before the actual program window would show up.

But honestly I don't really know for sure if any of this is true. I know it was true for Windows Vista, but Windows 7 and many of its features are built/improved from Vista. I'm just assuming that maximum UAC on Win7 is the same as the UAC on Vista.

Anyways I don't use an antivirus, I'm quite confident in my ability of being my own virus protection. Besides the bug I got from torrenting 2 weeks ago, I haven't caught a virus since like 2003.

 

I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials and it works great.
Doesn't hog resources or cause slowdown.

I would have suggested Avast, but they accidentally published a bad detection list that gave thousands of false positives, nearly removing much of my uninfected programs.

 

It's has long been fixed

 

Avira
AVG for best standard protection
Panda cloud
ESET NOD 32 - all rounder
Microsoft security essentials.

Bottom is least system hogging, a simple comparison.

As for myself Bitdefender ftw.