David, I think you are right. This is how I do things: I surf with my browsers sandboxied and when I finish I close the browsers and sandboxie deletes all the crap that the browsers have gathered. Perhaps people who only use Sandboxie and a firewall don't download stuff from the internet. I would still advise (although I am not a pro in this IT field either ) people to use AV too.

I noticed I did not say a word about Comodo's bad side. Comodo security system is a good thing if the user knows how to configure it so it does not give you constant trouble by asking questions and locking up new apps. I am not a master in IT but I was able to configure Comodo in a reasonably troublefree state although I just in case usually put the hips and sandbox off when I install stuff. The key in my opinion is to put Comodo in Clean pc mode which is relatively trouble free.I think it is worth the minor hassle because it gives me a safer Windows 7 system.

I tried free Avast and Avira. Both were bad experiences. Avira was bad because it does not have email protection and Avast messed Firefox up and force fed Chrome. I chose Comodo's AV because of these problems

If you want to go as far as something that covers every aspect, Kaspersky is hands down the best protection you will get. The problem I had with it is that it's resource intrusive. I could see using it for something like a medical computer where you were storing files but for a studio computer, that much security is a mistake because what you gain in scanning features, you lose in freed resources.

Since we're having a buffet in here, I'll recommend the one I've been using for the past 2 years: Webroots SecureAnywhere.
 
It's not free, but works really well for the small footprint (.70 MB) it leaves on your machine.

Sycraft
For free, Windows Defender (included in Windows 8, called Microsoft Security Essentials and available for download for Windows 7) is probably the best. Reasonably low resource usage, about 90% catch rate. It works ok.
 
Personally, I recommend ESET NOD32. It is not free, but it very good. Very fast, very stable, and high catch rate, more like 98-99%. Plus you can configure the scanning engine to exclude certain file types (so like I exclude NKI, NKM, WAV, FLAC, BFDLAC, and so on, all the audio stuff) to keep usage down on intensive stuff.

I got NOD32 and I'm liking it so far.  Especially like the exclude all audio related files, which I did.  Nice and unobtrusive, with a smaller footprint.  Thanks for the recommendation.

SF_Green
 
I got NOD32 and I'm liking it so far.  Especially like the exclude all audio related files, which I did.  Nice and unobtrusive, with a smaller footprint.  Thanks for the recommendation.

No problem. It is an exceedingly good product in my experience and has a history of being good. Also haven't had any issues with it (Bitdefender has been known to cause systems to crash in some cases).
 
Also note that NOD32 is smart and does hashing so if you scan your disk, it'll calculate the has of all the files and save that. Then on subsequent access, if the hash hasn't changed, it doesn't do a full scan on that file since it has already done it.

thanks everybody for the input. I do have the Windows Defender up with 8.1 and will probably get Malwarebytes. PS I don't download anything but music software related stuff on my recording PC.
;)

WSS

Microsoft's software is a bit below par though in detection and clear-up rates so I wouldn't recommend them per se. Advertisements can be a nuisance and especially intrusive pop-up and pop-unders when you're trying to do something else.
 
I've used Eset internet security in the past and it has saved my donkey a few times.
 
 

I happen to like Avast's free antivirus software, and MalwareBytes.  They both work well enough for me, and I have installed them on well over 100 computers I have built for folks over the past 3 years.
 
Backups and common sense go a long way towards reducing the pain/agony for when something DOES go wrong.
 
There MUST be a level of discipline for any security/backup/recovery process plan  to work properly.
 
Bob Bone