No, no no. For fuck's sake a thousand times no.
for the reasons already mentioned.

Any AV software you are supposed to pay for will invariably be bloated shite. The free stuff tends to be lightweight and faster than commercial offerings.

I use AVG Free Edition these days. It's a nice all-in-one package for virus and malware protection, it runs happily on my 5-year old XP PC and my 1 year old Vista PC and it's completely free. It also requires no intervention once installed, you just forget it's even there.

www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anti-virus-software.htm
( chart cat has an itch, Wed 14 Oct 2009, 9:51, 2 replies, latest was 15 years ago)

^^This
a thousand times YES
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Wed 14 Oct 2009, 12:15, Reply)

Correct sentiments, although NOD32 isn't bloated and would be my pick of purchased antivirus if I felt inclined to pay for such things.

Avast is my personal pick of the free ones. AVG did a silly thing a while back with some webpage scanner thingy that slowed surfing considerably. I think thats sorted now.
(XmanX captain upsetter hahahahaha, Wed 14 Oct 2009, 19:44, Reply)

You can choose not to install the link scanner bit

( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Tue 3 Nov 2009, 2:41, Reply)