After leaving Norton 5 years ago, I returned a year ago when then completely revamped NIS2009. Installs in 1 minute. Light on resources and minimal impact to PC operations. Very pleasantly surprised.
Just installed NIS2010 on a new Win7 install. Seems to work great so far.
I've tried a dozen-odd antivirus and firewall solutions and I think these are the best there is:
A/V: NAV 2010: Total footprint: 12-15MB
Firewall: Comodo 3.11 with D+: Footprint: 15MB
The two combined give the user a ridiculously secure setup that can shut out pretty much any trace of malware in addition to providing all forms of leak protection (unlike ESET ESS, Avira ISS etc). Too bad NAV has some issues at the moment that prevent me from recommending it wholeheartedly. Until Symantec (& Kaspersky) fix some niggling issues with NAV & KAV, Avira and GData are a wee bit better although they're memory hogs.
That said, the lightest (and one of the best) firewall I've ever tested is the age-old Kerio (Win98, XP, 2000). With a footprint of <4MB, it's super easy to configure and set-up.
I would recommend Avast.. It has high detection rates, a great resident scanner, is low on resources. It also comes with a free version that is just as good as the paid. For a firewall you should just stick with windows firewall, it is actually pretty good.
There is no such thing like better and the best in AV case.
Efficiency of AV software depends on updated signatures and this activity is based on old mechanism known as blacklists. AV are good for detection but when we are talking about prevention they simply failed. No AV on the world can stop/detect new, unknown malware which have been written eg. 5 min ago. AV works when detect known malware which they have in their signatures.
About lightweight, here is my security setup - yes you are not wrong, only one application :)
I have this configuration (in sig) for months - no issues/problems/infections anymore:
Today Vipre detected Internet Download Manager as a trojan and it deleted the whole program. I reinstalled IDM and it detected again. So i had to uninstall Vipre to get IDM working.I know its a false positive but its pain.
False positives are a pain, I know the feeling all too well which is why I've gone back to NOD32
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