It's no surprise that running an anti-virus program will put a performance hit on your PC. However, I was recently really getting fed up with Norton Anti-virus as it's resident programs were always bloated using up to 50mb of ram and my system had taken a significant performance hit on disk access; enough so to notice. I kept it installed though because the corporate edition was provided to me by my work (non-subscription based software) for free and it was what I was used to.
Well after waiting minutes for an application to load I flipped out and started removing applications. After ensuring my disk was defragged, files were cleaned up, etc. I noticed very little difference in performance. Why the speed slow down? I remember a speedy system when I first installed XP, I doubted that the "OS rot" was that bad. I knew it was that bastard Norton, so I searched for a free replacement. I came across Clam AV, but it looked incomplete. AVG makes a free system too, but again just anti-virus. Then I found Avast! which was rated well, claimed a large user base, and anti-malware support. I promptly uninstalled Norton and installed Avast.
After the uninstall of Norton AV the system seemed more responsive, so again there was physical proof in my mind that the problem was Norton AV. I installed Avast and after a registration, the application installed and started up. Amazingly, the noticeable system speed increase I received after uninstalling Norton AV was still there! Between three programs running in the background, Avast takes up 30mb of memory. A savings of 20mb of memory from Norton AV. It automatically has been updating itself daily, and thus far seems unobtrusive and easy to use.
If you are currently running Norton Anti-Virus, paying for a yearly subscription for it, etc. I highly suggest you uninstall it and try Avast. You may just see a significant performance increase like I did.
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