AV comparison, www.av-comparatives.org has made a rather interesting comparison of how much different AV products slow down your machine, besides the technical comparison they also offer some general advices on how to optimize your experience with AV products in general.. Interesting reading, get their PDF here
A summery of their findings (higher is better);
AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0 – 199 point
Kingsoft Antivirus 9 Plus – 196 point
F-Secure Anti-Virus 2010 – 195 point
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 – 193 point
Sophos Anti-Virus 9.0.1 – 193 point
Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 – 190 point
avast! Free 5.0 – 188 point
Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2010 – 188 point
ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0 – 183 point
McAfee VirusScan Plus 2010 – 174 point
Norman Antivirus & AntiSpyware 7.30 – 169 point
AVG Anti-Virus 9.0 – 164 point
BitDefender Antivirus 2010 – 154 point
G DATA AntiVirus 2010 – 152 point
eScan AntiVirus 10.0 – 137 point
Trustport Antivirus 2010 – 125 point
