Even if you avoid putting multitudes of security packages onto your computer, you need to be careful choosing what you do install. For now I’m going with Windows Firewall because it’s easy and cheap and seemingly fast. (Yeah I know it doesn’t block outbound connections.)
And anti-virus? Well I’m beginning to think, despite what I said last month, that CA AntiVirus may be helping to cause my Media Center problems. It’s also continuing to bug my kids (non-Admin users; and I plan to join them in that group) with pointless error messages.
Kaspersky gets a good rap from C/Net, so I’ve downloaded a trial version. I don’t have any hard data, but the machines already seem more responsive.
By the way, reading an APCMag anti-virus review (Feb 2007), it noted that Norton takes up over 300Mb of disk space! 300Mb?!? For anti-virus? That’s insane.