PC safety without loss of speed

[kapow]

Does the new version of Norton drastically reduce the speed of a PC?
My 2 year old PC runs fine, while my shiney new laptop takes about 5 minutes to start up :) The only difference is old and new Norton. On the laptop double clicking a word doc in an email attachment takes about 4 minutes, yes 4 minutes! to open. This is driving me mad. Is it Norton? How is it fixed?

[2by4]

Norton slows down everything, try something like AVG, it's much leaner. I can't stand anything Norton puts out.