First thing I do with new laptops is uninstall any sort of antivirus software which may have come by default. Its a guaranteed performance boost. Only wimps and retards need it installed.
Yes, I remove it and any other trial-ware and redundant applications.

However I don't agree with the bit I have put in bold; I believe that it is actually far worse............the only people who need it installed are the OEMs and the Security Suite vendors.

OEMs are paid by the SSVs to do it, and the SSVs hope that there will be enough people who buy a full licence after the 60 day trial to make it profitable for them.

I don't know what your thinking on that might be, but to me it looks very much like a cross between scareware and spam, only it involves large US corporates and multinationals?

Now, over here, Microsoft have been made to give people a list of alternatives to IE. How about the OEMs had to give a list of security suite vendors, and point out that there is a firewall and AV built into Windows itself?............... that would stir them up?

A WORD OF WARNING (to those not already aware):

If your computer has shipped with third party security software it will almost certainly have disabled the Microsoft security solutions. If you then remove the third party security software you will probably be totally vulnerable unless you have functionality in your hub/router.

In the short term, the easiest thing would be to go into the Microsoft Security Centre/Firewall and enable everything again, until you havbe made up your mind what you want to do.