Ok so this thread came up (for whater reason) as a high ranking google search result. Therefore I decided to join up and give you all a bit of direction. Not only this but hope that anyone else who reads these forums is not misled by some of the unwarranted merits provided here.
Norton: Of the major players, it's the worst there is. I'm shattered you paid for it.
One of the norton users luckily also had malwarebytes which is a very good secondary scanner.
Many people who know about computer security will purchase malwarebytes pro because it is a one off payment (just a piece of advice there if you are going to spend money)
Avast is a very good anti-virus, definitely among the top few anti-virus
Avira is also very good but it has annoying ads/popups and I can't abide that
I want to mention about some people saying some anti-virus is better or worse because it says stuff (so people think it is actually doing something or people think it's crap because it needs to ask) and the flipside for programs that don't ask. Generally an anti-virus aimed at people who have no idea will try not to ask as much as possible because they will get the choices wrong. The downside here is that occasionally they will block something you need. This is generally recognised as something not working for no reason. Because the firewall has silently blocked it (just in case) instead of asking the user.
Do not confuse firewall and antivirus and never bundle them. Generally if a company makes a good firewall it's anti-virus is terrible and vice versa.
Someone mentioned backups. In the data world the professionals have a mantra. If your data isn't in 3 places at all times it basically doesn't exist. Minimum of original and 2 backups for valuable data. One of these must also be off-site. By that I mean one copy of the data should be in a different geographical location or in the cloud. The only exception to this rule might be a fireproof safe in the same house containing the backup. But fireproof safes only last so long in a fire. Don't lost all your family videos and pother priceless irreplaceable data because you're lazy. I've had plenty of people come into places i've worked completely broken down at data loss. And just a side note on data recovery. You will hear people say data can be recovered off a hard-drive. While this is true the cost of prohibitive. A man once came into the shop and asked me to recover his data but the hard drive was smashed. He asked me to get the data off and I said it's not really possible. He asked what do you mean not really possible? I said well the data can be gotten off the drive but the cost is too high. He said I don't care what it costs just get the data off and call me when it's done. He started to walk out of the shop. I stopped him and said, no, you don't understand. and I proceeded to tell him a little story about how a space shuttle coming back to earth broke up and exploded re-entering the atmosphere. After many years they found the hard drive in a swamp buried under mud and the hard drive was in pieces and NASA pieced it back together and got something like 95% of the data off the hard drive. I said to him though, that took NASA large teams of professionals, very expensive equipment, 6 years working on it. I could get the data off your drive but it would cost you many millions of dollars. So technically the data is there and can be retrieved. But not feasibly, how hard would it have been so just make a backup.
Superantispyware
Spybot
These are good extras as well.
Someone said they added zonealarm and it felt like their computer bogged down and was going to put norton on instead. Zonealarm is so lightweight and norton is the biggest heaviest beast of a thing I have seen. Kaspersky is also very heavy. A good anti-virus won't need to tell you it has blocked something because it's just annoying the user unnecessarily and bad anti-virus will often CLAIM that they are doing all this stuff and saving you from nasties when it's just a load of lies to make you thin it's good so you don't try something else.
Linux is a pretty good option if you can get someone to install it on your computer because the infection rates are much lower and if you only use the internet and email the learning curve is quite small. That being said I doubt any of you will
Linux is a big leap for most, no matter what way you look at it.
Here is a document I was reading a while back about anti-virus comparisons.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/avc_fdt_201309_en.pdf
As my last piece of advice:
Antivirus: bitdefender because it's quiet and won't ask you anything and does a really good job
Firewall: I use comodo but it WILL ask you things and the general rule for blocking or allowing things if you have no idea is. Only "remember answer" when you're sure. If you;re unsure only block it once and see if something stops working. If something stops working you know you blocked something you need and allow it next time. You will have to use the 'treat as' box when installing or updating programs because this makes a lot of changes to the computer and the firewall is cautious of many changes because that's how viruses act.
My advice on your own firewall would be to try them off this list until you find one that suits you:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-firewall.htm#Quick_Selection_Guide