Not surprising if we are talking about past versions. Poll would have been better if we were discussing PRESENT versions; what's the point of discussing past AV versions from years ago! "Which is the heaviest AV you have used in the last 6-12 months" would have been a better question.
I didn't vote but i will give my opinion. Norton back in the day was extremely heavy, Avira when maxed also hogged down my PC and Emsisoft updates hogs down startup of my laptops only. (On my desktop i cannot feel any kind of lag)
only the past nortons were heavy not sure how anyone can really truly say the newest (2009 and up) nortons are heavy they are far from it. and im sorry but even the newest kaspersky including 2012 are just well pigs. some may disagree but even on the newest systems i get calls from customers after they buy it on the recc of office depot or somewhere to "get rid of it", followed prob by mcafee being one of the absolute worst in this area... it just eats up your cpu and never lets go... others are bitdefender and gdata both pretty bad but bitdenfender 2012 is for sure better than 2011 was. and i cant believe panda has no votes....
Norton Internet Security 2004 was really very heavy. I won't vote though as it wouldn't be fair towards the later versions of Norton which seem according to most users very light.
You are correct the question should be on latest 2-3 years... Anyhow i feel bitdefender is heavies in last 10 years followed by kaspersky. Norton had dramatically improved their product from last 2-3 years so i avoid to choose them as heaviest
Where is Ikarus in the list? because it IS the heavist AV I ever used, second place to old version of Emsisoft (it also uses Ikarus engine, funny huh?) and latter, Outpost,Trustpost...
Which while true for some older versions it is misrepresentative of the current product. I just reinstalled the 2012 version after having used Norton for a few months and found KIS to actually be lighter. And I voted Kaspersky but I don't want to give the wrong impression of the current product.
I guess Norton 2006-2008 was heavy also, I found bidefender 4-5 years ago as super heavy. Kaspersky has always been moderate heavy. same for f-secure. In current situation, I find Kaspersky,McAfee as bit heavy. Gdata as quite heavy. Norton,Eset,Avast, trend micro are now good and comparatively light. would be using f-secure 2012 a try again after 3-4 years, hope I am not again frustrated.
Mine will weigh about 1 kg, it will be inside my modem/router as a separate device freeing up all my PC's on Lan from sw versions.
I'm a big proponent of MSE, glad we all dumped Mcaffee and Norton. The slowdown and bloat were killers. I had a case where McAffee once thought it itself was a virus and kept trying to quarantine the main scan engine.
Traditionally, NOD32 has been among the lightest AVs... -http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/performance-tests- http://www.raymond.cc/antivirus/index.html http://www.passmark.com/benchmark-reports/index.htm
Jack you and I must run the same stuff around the same periods of time. What you posted is my experience as well.