Most computer magazine articles will have biased articles because Symantec and McAfee have paid for advertising in the magazines. Virus Bulletin 100 is a top commercial website for IT professionals. Its a paid for site that most here probably don't read.
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/rap-index
the best are along the top right corner
they rate ESET NOD32 the top antivirus you can have and it carries their VB100 award. ESET has had this award since the late 90's and no other AV program can claim that.
http://www.eset.com/home/compare-eset-to-competition
If you look up comodo,you will find articles from this month where there were security breaches from comodo. i would avoid it.
Recent reviews revealed a problem with Kaspersky being one of the slower ones. Evidently Norton has really upgraded their software, the tests showed they are now very fast. NOD 32 has always had a small footprint and used very little of your system resources. Avoid McAfee, it has so many issues. AVAST the best of the free ones because it includes rootkit protection and boot scanner.
Dont get the security system, just the antivirus program and run Windows defender - both protect around the clock. Apps like malwarebytes and superantispyware are scanners for when you get an infection, not for protection
Hope this helps
Still not sure about Microsoft Security Essentials
...Although the Beta release of Microsoft Security Essentials did poorly in PC Magazine tests, the official final release did significantly better in AV-Test.org tests. According to Neil Rubenking, a PC Magazine author, in an on-demand scan test that he conducted in June 2009, Microsoft Security Essentials Beta found 89 percent of all malware samples: It found only 30 percent of commercial keyloggers, 67 percent of rootkits and only half of scareware samples. The suite's real-time protection found 83 percent of all malware samples and blocked the majority of them: In this test, Microsoft Security Essentials found 40 percent of the commercial keyloggers and 78 percent of the rootkits.[33] Later on October that year, AV-Test.org conducted a series of trials on the officially released version of the product in which Microsoft Security Essentials detected and caught 98.44 percent of 545,034 computer viruses, computer worms and software Trojan horses as well as 90.95 percent of 14,222 spyware and adware samples....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Security_Essentials
http://antivirus.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=antivirus&cdn=compute&tm=10&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=5&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.av-test.org/
I have to admit that MSE runs great on Win 7 - I run it on my wifes computer and it has done fine so far.
here is an article where an expert intentionally infects his computer with the bug that is reaching epidemic numbers on the forums. His antivirus = Microsoft Security Essentials. It does not detect the bug, the installation and no warnings. Read it
http://windowssecrets.com/2011/04/07/01-LizaMoon-infection-a-blow-by-blow-account
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial174.html
http://antivirus.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=antivirus&cdn=compute&tm=137&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=5&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/products.xml