Norton is indeed poor in terms of system performance and resources but will beat AVG for virus hunting, in fact many well written and renowned pc books mention norton.

AVG is ok if your in a hole for a while but remember that the free adition is just that, free. It is never going to match the paid versions of the big companies. Also remember that any anti virus software will seem good if it doesn't crash and runs fast/smoothly. Its not exactly going to flash up and say, "hey i've just missed a worm/trojan/virus" is it? The best way in hunting for one is to get hold of all the major ones after reading up and then test them and infect yourself. Otherwise result to the reviews if thats not possible.

Even AVG paid version isn't the best but its not bad and better than nothing. Sometimes having the best one on resourses doesn't do the deepest scans or have the best database and update suite. Doing medium level on real time scan and full on on demand scan is advisable.

Kaspersky blows any AVG away. Check quite a few review sites but on this one linked below it gets a silver, AVG gets 8th. Not bad if your a cheapskate though.

http://anti-virus-software-review.to...+virus+reviews