I am used to being forced to have to "defend" myself against people who are quite ready to attack on the sites that arent as nice as this one where people actually use common sense.

[Remember that there's both feature- and code-bloat. The home editions certainly suffer from code bloat... sluggish memory/cpu hogs./quote]
For me that happened to be true,  and also

Anyways, You are right, it is quite easy to overlook the processes being used by a program as complex as an a/v.

Indeed. And the kernel-mode components aren't even visible in taskmgr or process explorer... then there's all the various services that some of the products include (scheduler, on-demand engine, bla bla bla).

I was amazed what I found when you do some digging,
by using Sysinternals Process Explorer or even FaberToys.
I am not referring to any particular program,but many apps are using
components or modules,that show up under Windows Explorer or svchost.
Yet in TaskManager their main executable shows a respectful use of
memory and CPU.But like I said,Windows Explorer may very well have increased its use of Memory/CPU.
The average person will not know what really happened.
It's only when you start digging that you find out why certain apps
are slowing your system.

All this is to say that if one is happy with a certain program,
keep it, if not "out she goes".
For me there is no emotional attachment.
I might defend an author or developer (like "mouser")if I feel
that their integrity is attacked,but as to software,sometimes
there are as many opinions and experiences as there are people :)

So,back to finding an AV program without "bloat" :)

Pete.