Antivirus/firewall software recommendations

[LadyWellian]

I need to beef up my home PC security in order to get remote access for work. I need firewall and antivirus software from the following lists. Ideally I'd like to buy one package that includes both firewall and antivirus, and I don't want to spend ££££ on it. It's annoying that Norton AV is not on the second list, as that is what we have at home aready.

Firewall:
MS Firewall
Norton
Trend Micro
Tiny
Lava soft
Checkpoint Zone Alarm
Grisoft
CA Personal Firewall
Kapersky
McAfee.

Antivirus:
? Microsoft Essentials
Avira
Avast
Computer Associates
Kapersky
Lavasoft
McAfee
AVG
Panda Software
Sophos
Symantec
Trend Micro

I was thinking of going for a McAfee package that does both, but then I looked on a review site and the AV bit came 15th out of 25, which doesn't sound very good.

I'm running a 6-year-old laptop with Windows XP.

All recommendations welcomed!

Thanks.

Arsing bullets, sorry. Should have previewed!

You don't need to spend any money.

Symantec is the same as Norton so it will do fine.

But Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Firewall work well, slow your machine down less than Norton, are free, and are on the list so personally I would uninstall that dinosaur and move on.

I don't use a virus scanner but I do use Zonealarm, which is straightforward to use and free.

Norton and McAfee are resource hogs so I can't recommend either of them, particularly if you're using an older machine. AVG is free but you need to keep on top of housekeeping as it will fill your hard disk up with update files. I have used Sophos in the past and found it to be very non-intrusive and easy to use.

Zonealarm do do an anti-virus product as well as their more well known Firewall.

If you're on a Windows PC then you really do need anti-virus, anti-malware and a firewall. And I consider all of them to be very important but I'd put them in that descending order of priority.

To not have anti-virus on a Windows machine is asking for trouble.

I use ESET and think it's quite good.....

Plus I use an anti malware thing that I downloaded for free...

Thanks! Might look at MrA's suggestion - 'free' is certainly attractive and non-resource-hungry another bonus as I've only got a 30GB HDD.

On a 6yr old laptop, i'd definitely recommend the built in MS firewall and MS Security Essentials. The firewall because its already there and both because of their low resource requirements.

Stuff like Symantec gives you bells & whistles to justify their own existence but on an older laptop i'd be more worried about performance rather than few extra bells.