So this is where you AV folk hang out huh?

I'm in the market for some security software for a new computer, but know next to nothing about it. I have searched endlessly for a good review of recent software but haven't found anything recent or credible. I was hoping somebody could give me some pointers of things to look for?

This site did a quiz of my usage and recommended Bit Defender. How does Bit Defender stack up to others, and in particular Norton and Mcafee, or freebies like avast. Is it worth forking out the dough?

My new laptop is running Windows 7 PRO 64 bit, with 500GB drive, but I don't want anything thats going to clog up all the resources. My last laptop was running avast but I found that it was too slow and things were still falling through the cracks. And even though the scanners were picking up the viruses they were having trouble deleting them.

I don't really have any need for parental control or spam filtering (thanks to google). But I do want to ensure privacy and security, and my web browser (chrome) does the phishing, right? I don't mind forking out the dough if I'm getting the security, but which package is going to give me the best?

PS. The links in the Newbies FAQ are all broken... Someone might want to look into that