Norton Antivirus

intel

zacspeed wrote:

I work in a computer shop & MOST of these machines we get in to fix with virus/trojan/worm/dialler problems are running Norton.
I wouldn't give it house room - utter !!!!!!!

Can you expand on that, In like why you may think that is and
what can users do to prevent this, and what versions of Norton are
the main culprit and what virus names.. as it maybe virus specific failures.


:beer:

wolfman

From what I've read Norton has actually got quite a good detection rate.

As far as being a resource hog, it's not so bad. I think it was the 2004 version that brought around that reputation as 2003 was fine. In Avast isn't much better, nor I think is AVG.

Basically, Norton is above average, but there are better alternatives. Something like Nod32 if you don't mind paying. And AVG if you want free antivirus.

With regards to most computers coming in with virus problems running Norton. That doesn't mean it's a bad product. Did all of these machines have firewalls? Were the users competent?

rsykes2000

I don't use it. Found it is RAM and CPU-time -hungry and too intrusive. Use McAfee v8 instead, far nicer program all round.

rubytuesday

When I was having all the problems with my computer I asked a friend who is a computer programmer whether I should get Nortron, he said he doesn't use it anymore as it is very hungry I think he uses spysweeper or something like that.

woo

It came pre-installed on my vaio laptop, so thought i would give it a whirl. Found it really impacted the performace on pretty much a vanilla installation of windows and norton.
Agree with those who say that it is RAM and CPU hungry.
Went from that to F-Secure which was reasonable, but didn't like to recognise updated products. Now trialling the OneCareLive Beta from MS which i have had no issues with and good detection rates. Desktop using mcafee, but even with that found the spam killer is a resource hog so out that went, firewall and virusscan perform well.

nearlyrich

woo wrote:

It came pre-installed on my vaio laptop

Me too and it's working OK at the moment, my trial period is running out soon so I will be looking for a free solution.

We use the corporate version of McAfee at work but I don't mess with that we have techies

tigermatt

I voted "No" for not using Norton Antivirus, but I do use Norton Ghost 2002 which I have never had any problems with in the past (except for it not supporting XP SP2 and 2k3 NTFS drivers, I have to run it with a -ntil switch, but that's another story )

I use AVG (Free) for my anti-virus and it works a treat. It has only ever found something once for me but that was on an old computer I didn't really care about anyway - It finds loads on every scan for some people though so it proves it does work.

Reluctant_spender

I used to use nortons back in the days when a 350mhz processor was top flight. Never really noticed the resource problem.

My main gripe with it was the fact that updates came weekly unless a real problem came along. When I became more computer aware and visited various other forums, those that specialise in hijack this removal I noticed that nortons kept popping up.

I now use Nod32 and have no problems. - Horses for courses

VickyA_2

OH who works in IT swears by Norton - so we've got it on our home PC, though he did pay for it! He's just rebuilt our PC and reinstalled Norton - and managed to get another 12 months, even though he'd already used 6 months of the "12 month cover".

abwsco

AVG here. Did have Norton on first PC but got rid of it when the free subscription was up.