Norton is written in Microsloth Visual Basic, so it's slow as molasses in January. McAfee sprouts over a score of programs, and you can't disable them, even when you pause it. If you're offline and running Photoshop or video software, both of these programs will double execution time at the very least.

I like Kaspersky because it will actually allow itself to be disabled. As I recall, AVG did that too, but AVG interferred with utorrent, and there wasn't a thing I could do to get around it.

The newest version of Kaspersky, 8, has a whole new look and feel. Unfortunately, it makes up its mind about what programs are dangerous without giving you an initial opportunity to tell it. Then there's a tedious ritual you have to go through to change each program's trust level. It needs a lot of work. Also, banners are annoying as the dickens.

I'm still using Kaspersky, but I'm on the lookout for something better. I loved Zone Alarm/Kerio because it easily stopped applications from running, but it crashed too often, sometimes invisibly, and twice led to my computer being infected.

Anyone know of "the best" one?