Vista - What AV to use with Vista Home Premium 64 bit

About 4 weeks ago I took the leap into Vista despite all my colleagues warnings and installed on a new VAIO laptop! I installed very little in the way of software, just Microsoft Office 2003 and Norton 2009 AV. The sytem kept freezing and I had to do several restores. I noticed when if froze the window "Norton is performing background tasks" often showed up. After two weeks, after I did the latest Microsoft recommended update, this happened again, but this time I could not restore. So now I have done a complete system recovery, but have not tried to connect to the internet because I don't know what AV to use. I keep getting conflicting stories about Norton vs Kaspersky. Meanwhile,isn't Microsoft phasing out LiveOne Care in June? What do you suggest I do so I can get back on the Internet?

Try AVG Free Edition, it's highly rated by PC World, Cnet and ZDNet and best of all Free!

I use NOD32 on my Home Premium but it's a paid for program Avast is highly thought of and there is a free version that works fine on Vista.

Trouble is you will get lots of recommendations about what AV to use but it really all comes down to what suits you and your machine the best. Most have a trial version you can try to see if it suits you or you could try the free ones to see which you prefer, it really all comes down to personal choice in the end.

Norton 2009's resource footprint is on par with NOD32 now, but is seriously lacking in heuristic detection (detection of new viruses and malware for which definitions do not yet exist). Onecare is indeed being phased out (I am a perpetual Beta tester, but removed it becuase it is really ineffective, and I had to keep running the online NOD32 to detect and cleanup what it missed). Kaspersky is on par with Norton/Microsoft/Mcafee, but had an incredibly high false detection rate in recent testing. (detects legitimate program/Windows files/executables as malware/viruses- which when removed results in corruption and/or program/Windows instability)
note- Vista recommends 2GB of RAM- anything less will cause freezing and "slide-show" like effects.

AVG Free Forum :: Information And Alerts :: PC crash after AVG update 9 Nov 2008
AVG is ok, but has had some issues recently with viruses gettting through, and updates that would crash a pc-resulting in the need for Vista re-installation. "PC World"/"Cnet"/"ZDNet" are not Certified Labs known for Antivirus testing, nor do they do testing of the products they recommend-their endorsement is what is known as "Editor's Choice", and most of these result from Antivirus vendors who pay them to promote their Antivirus product. You should take an "editor's Choice" with a grain of salt, and instead look at the comparatives done by Certified Labs (i.e., AV-Comparatives, and Virus Bulletin are two of the most well known Comparative Antivirus testers)

NOD32 just came out with Version 4 which blows away version 3.0, and is a free download/upgrade. For those who dont already use it, try the 30 day trial. It is one of the best, and has the highest certifications for Antivirus/Antimalware detection.
New NOD32 4 & Smart Security 4 Released!!!

To see how different Antivirus programs performed in Vista lab/comparative testing- Certifications acheived, and products that failed, see this sticky:
Vista SP1 Antivirus Performance