>I thought I'd relate an experience installing Norton Internet Security 2006, maybe someone can tell if it's typical:
>
>- Typical PC workstation, Celeron 2.4GHz, 256MB RAM
>- Windows XP Home SP2
>- Fresh boot, no user apps running: RAM usage 152MB
>
>- Installed NIS 2006 and all updates
>- Fresh boot, no user apps running: RAM usage 226MB
>
>This was consistent over several boots. IOW NIS 2006 uses 74MB RAM, almost half as much as XP itself plus a few utility programs that were present prior to NIS's installation.
>
>On this particular machine the situation is even worse than it first appears. As soon as the user starts opening a few apps such as Outlook 2003, a Canon page scanner app etc. RAM usage climbs above 256MB, the system starts paging to disk and gets very sluggish. Also there is no longer any free RAM for use as a disk cache.
>
>So, if you're planning to install NIS 2006 on XP SP2, it seems you need an absolute bare minimum of 384MB RAM, and preferably 512MB or more.

Memory hogs. I'd like to see a comparison of different AV systems. Here's one:

AVG Free Edition - +/-42Mg with alert manager, update manager, email scanner, control center.