I run Norton AV and Norton Firewall (separate products) on my Dell 4550 2.8Ghz and now I'm with Bulldog my machine flys, its wonderful, I just wish I'd switched earlier.
People are right, Norton can be resource hungry, but I've only ever had trouble with it once, but a reinstall sorted that out. Saying that I'm going to give the new Kaspersky firewall a look with mine comes up for renewal, its suppose to be excellent,