We recently chose Sophos because most of the alternatives are poor. I use Nod32 at home because its lightweight and fast, and i did try the business solution but its managment tools are useless and outdated.
F-Secure, symantec, Mc Afee are all too heavy weight and usless. pretty much everything else is either the same or designed for small businesses.
Sophos Support have been excelent which was the main reason i went with them, I have actually been to their HQ and seens there resources which are very good.
Primarily i went with them because there Managment tools are the best. It was the only software where i could easily manage 680 machines, and monitor everything they are up to.
On the same note: Disabling On Access on servers makes perfect sense as large runs with backups, and mass user requests are very intensive. I believe the recomendation is primarily for File servers for obvious reasons. If its a large concern though the best solution is to have hardware AV between the servers and the users.
