antivirus and firewall help

as an authorized voice (well, i regent a computers shop and kill more virus daily than most ^^) i can say that norton is currently a very bad antivirus... weighty, slow (in every sense, it makes your comp run slower, it is slow protecting against new viruses...) and stupidy annoying.
its very difficult to uninstall (it always left something behind) and it gets corrupted or starts giving weird error windows really easily...
i can say i repair more issues related with malfunctions of this antivirus than issues related with any virus
so i would recommend you to remove it (there is a removal tool available in symantec website in case you have trouble uninstalling), pack the cd in a box with some stones, label the box as "W32.Norton, highly dangerous", and trow it to the ocean close to an oceanic trech

once said that lets answer the question:

i use a light antivirus, something with no useless colorful windows. currently i use avira antivir. its cheap (even free if you use the fully functional trial version and can live with the ads it display at every update), very light (it wont slow down your computer) and updates frequently.
it has had some issues related with the heuristic seach but, well, i disable that -mostly useless- stuff in every antivirus i install to avoid annoying false detections

for firewall i use no more than windows firewall:
a firewall must be able to close every port in your computer and open only those you select to those ip ranges you select. windows firewall is able to do that quite well. nothing more is needed for a firewall, so i dont see the point in installing another one
(well, unless 1) you need parental control, 2) your computer have several users with different firewall needs, 3) you need a really fine tune up, 4) you love colorful configure windows with silly wizards, or 5) you think your computer is running too fast and want to slow it down a bit)

as you see im a heavy supporter of light antivirus: if your security system takes more resources and creates more trouble than the threat it must fight, then something is not working fine...

just my thought

you could try Avast, and its free

Well i use Kaspersky and for now it works fine.

Is Kaspersky a "light" antivirus?

I use the McAfee Firewall and Anti-Virus. It doesn't slow my pc down, but it does occasionally annoy me by blocking programs I have given permission too.

I fine tuned it a bit and it works great.

kaspersky is not light, but is not as heavy as norton or panda, so it can be used even by ppl with computers with some years old
mcaffe works in the same way, not too heavy unless you purchase all and every modules and let it autoconfigure
i like avast too but it uses an interface somewhat different to all other antivirus and it takes some time to get used to it

@scout: np m8 ... ill take a look on that peerguardian...;)

I've used Avast for a couple of years. Haven't had a virus since I installed it. Very frequent updates and upgrades, easy on resources too. You do have to register, which seems to turn away some people.

I've also heard good things about AVG. For the best free software, go to http://ramsinks.com/software/. Say Hi to [GF]Burke for me while you're there.

Norton is Sooooo bad. I got rid of it and got Avast. which is really good imo.
I also got webroute window washer and a registry repair, which got rid of a lot of stuff left behind by norton etc etc.
I have heard that AVG is good too.

This thread is a little bit stale but in case anyone ever needs it I highly suggest Spyware Blaster, it is amazing for protecting against spyware, it cannot eliminate it but it blocks a huge array of spyware, I've never had any spyware go through it. Not only that but it's super light because it only needs to be used when you are using an internet browser or similar program. Not only that but its completely free.