oreo27

Actually, AVG is not a resource hog, it simply eats up more resources than Avast or Avira. Avast is also pretty good, I've used that for my virtual machine (xp) replacing my AVG free and I can say that it's running smoother. Although, IMO Avira is still the best out there. But I think if you're a beginner, you should stick to AVG or Avast. I mean Avira is not harder to use it's just that there's no link scanner in the free version. Something advanced users more than often do not need. Zone alarm is pretty good although it causes some issues on some setups that I won't take the risk of installing it. I'm sticking to the default firewall of Windows.