There is just one fact you need to take into consideration before you start looking out for anti-virus software - 110% user subjectivity on this particular topic. What I want to say with this is that most of user reviews you can find about certain anti-virus or security suites on the web are by my opinion doubtful and of very questionable background. If not that well most users are happy with free anti-virus software, some are happy because their anti-virus software has nice animation running in system tray, few actually figured out how their anti-virus software actually slowed down their system, some of them got it bundled with some other product, etc. The fact is most of users post their comments based on their preferences which can be or aren't at all useful or relevant to other users. Very few users actually post their comments based on real effectiveness of used anti-virus software. By my experience there is only one 100% true fact - any anti-virus software is way better than none. But, if that is not enough for you, well keep on reading, otherwise, also keep on reading and maybe you'll discover you still can do better than that.
Point beyond writing previous paragraph lies in fact it is very hard to find a trustful resource of anti-virus reviews. I based mine solely one the following sites Proactive Security Challenge 64, AV Comparatives and Virus Bulletin. I did that because I found out most of the users on the web trust those resources even their results vary for same products. This is not so strange as they use different testing methodologies, so be sure to read all about them on each particular site. Those three sites should cover most of the situations you'll ever get in touch with. Be aware that the first one mostly tests firewall possibilities, I mostly used the second one to get an idea of real world protection tests results, while I used the third one to get an overall idea and to "connect" and interpret the results from first two test results providers.
Before continuing I feel like I need to say how my personal impression is that an average user should take into consideration that results provided on Proactive Security Challenge 64 do represent a industry grade test, which in other words can be interpreted that 99,99% of users will never get in touch with (be exposed to) such threats and that most of firewalls marked red on their list will do just fine for an average user. And by term "average" I mean regular computer usage like office and Internet applications.
Only product I was keen to investigate about more was Comodo Internet Security as it was only tested on Proactive Security Challenge 64 and got highest score, while other two sites haven't tested this product. There is a big controversy surrounding Comodo and their products due to their continuous selling of security certificates to different publicly recognized badware sites. Due to that fact they were banned and marked as malware on certain software distribution sites (Softpedia). The fact is in no way this can be take as positive approach nor put a bright light on any Comodo product. From my previous experience with Comodo products they tend to crawl all over your system and are quite hard to uninstall afterwards and most of all they do eat a lot of system resources, so no matter of any test results I personally discarded Comodo as a product I wanted to build my security on.
Another thing I decided is not to use bundled software suites anymore, rather to go for different anti-virus and firewall products. One thing I was quite surprised about was a product named Privatefirewall which got very high results and what is quite important it is a 100% free (since recent) product. I personally primary consider this product as firewall, but it is all-round protection tool with anti-virus elements. Even it was only tested on Proactive Security Challenge 64, I found out PrivacyWare the maker of this software is a recognized and trusted company in the field of firewall software, even on industry level. Therefore I picked this product to rely my firewall security on. Also sSince I like to be asked to approve/deny every single connection going in or out from my computer I found Privatefirewall as a very good choice. This is a very good way to find out which programs actually do what kind of requests on your system.
Now all I needed to pick was anti-virus software. Well regarding to AV Comparatives Kaspersky is the best one in this field, but from my experience, it does tend to eat a lot of system resources so it was out of consideration. Also be aware AV Comparatives tested security suites not just their anti-virus components. Since I already picked my favorite firewall I somehow decided to stick/get back to ESET Anti-Virus as it has a very small footprint and eats very few system resources and is generally recognized as such. Also I never got infected before while I was using ESET Security Suite. When looking on AV Comparatives chart it is not very highly ranked, but once again this is a overall security suites test, not just anti-virus test. Also be aware that absolute difference between ESET detection rate and Kapsersky as first ranked one was only 1.1% which was quite acceptable for me. BitDefender on other hand was simply too paranoid for my taste while I used it, but could be a good choice for non-experienced users.
Bottomline I decided to use Privatefirewall and ESET Anti-Virus in combination and only the time will show if this was a good decision. I probably missed a lot of elements in this post, but it is quite hard to write anything in detail without making an essay and this was not my intention. Therefore I urge on you to post your opinions with various anti-virus and security suite software and additionally contribute to this post's quality.
If someone is interested in obtaining free firewall software if Privatefirewall I would suggest trying out Online-Armor or Outpost Free Security Suite (available in x86 and x64 bits).
And for the end if you're looking out for a really low profile and still efficient firewall give TinyWall a try.
UPDATE:
After using Privatefirewall for a few weeks now here is my overall opinion of it - it is a very good firewall, but it can very easily confuse and turn down less experienced users. It does scan every single process and asks for your approval or denial of it at least once if you allow it for the future or every single time if you don't. But Privatefirewall is not only monitoring Internet connections it will as well notify you of any system change which for sure is not a very suitable for less experienced and less demanding users (don't take this literally - it doesn't mean less experienced users require lower levels of security, just like in any other thing if you want to fine tune something you'll need to get to know it better than average).
For users not wanting their firewall popping up every few minutes, I suggest to try out TinyWall. It will provide a much more comfortable protection.
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