Looking to renew AV but finding Kaspersky heavyweight

We have to renew our AV licence in 3 weeks time, but the currently installed Kaspersky AV is proving too resource-sapping for some of our older workstations. We have about 50 PCs running XP SP3 and they have 512MB RAM and 2GHz Celeron processors. KAV knocks the stuffing out them, and I have to use a special cut-down configuration just to get the usability back up to an acceptable level. I have read that BitDefender is as good, if not better than KAV, but would it run on these lowly PCs? If not, any other suggestions? I am really looking for a combination of good protection, and minimal impact on CPU and memory. TIA.

 

If I had to choose AV for older computer I would choose between Eset, Webroot and Avira. They are all really light and offer great protection. I suggest you try them and then decide which one is best for you.

hqsec

 

mys would be comodo because their zero day protection is the best

 

I second that, both ESET and Webroot will run fine on a computer with only 512MB of RAM. I have tested myself

 

Eset.

 

'combination of good protection, and minimal impact on CPU and memory' Avast is very good, there is a Comodo too (Both free).

 

I am surprised you can be productive on those computers. I would worry about windows xp going out of support and replacing those computers and upgrading to a modern operating system. Since Av versus AV is not allowed on this forum I will not get involved in that.

 

No A vs b obviously, but you can't go wrong with Webroot. A nod to ESET, Comodo, Panda, and Avira as well.