Wow, I had no idea that having an anti-virus and firewall would suck up all a system's resources, very disappointing. I thought programs were supposed to get better, instead it seems like they are all bloated and take up way too much of the system. So what to do, have a slower computer but safer, or a faster computer more at risk. I am using a notebook so adding RAM is different. We have added it before to the desktop, no problem, but don't know anything about adding it to a notebook, and not sure I'd want to try. Do you have to have that done? Will adding RAM fix the problem or is that really not worth the trouble and just find other software to use? I did a lot of checking before I picked Avast and Comodo, I was using AVG and Sygate. AVG also became too bloated and didn't work very well with their last update, and Sygate was abandoned and did not update at all. Thanks for all your help and any more advice!