Do I need Norton?

judderman62

skiddy2k wrote: »

Norton 2007 is a good AntiVirus believe it or not...

ehm .... definitely not ... yep not

judderman62

BillScarab wrote: »

A recent test in Computer Shopper (I think) rated Norton and Mcafee very poorly. From memory Kasperksy and Steganos were the best, basically they are the same product but Steganos is cheaper. Avg cam out best fo the free products.

Yes I have that issue too - and Yes Norton (what a suprise) and McAfee came out rather poorly the top ones were:

Steganos
Kaspersky
Nod32 (which I've used for the last 4 years or so)

judderman62

superscaper wrote: »

Surprisingly (considering other tests and people's recommendations) NOD32 came out only average.

Slightly misleading - it wasn;t rated that far behind and in summarising they advised to go for ne of : Steganos, Kaspersky or NOD32

judderman62

Maybe there isn't an explanation , maybe it;s just altruism on their part.

there are many, many software prorgrams out there that are truly excellent and yet are free - I must use a fair few. Crap Cleaner is a great example - small download, doesn't use much resource, does it's job supremely well and yet it's free. Others include :

DVDShrink
Essential Pim
Spybot S&D
Adaware
Utorrent
A squared (trojan fdetecetion - would reccomend this for security too)
Faststone Image viewer

the list goes one.

In some cases they have two versions - one paid for with a few more features and the thinking there is if you like the free version they hope you will pay for the paid version.

oxters wrote: »

Thank you all for th
e advice. Can someone please tell me how a program that you can download for free is better than one which millions? of people pay for. Who pays the cost of writing it, maintaining it and keeping it up to date with all the threats? If the freebie is better, why don't Norton/Mcafee just copy the software? I'm told that NASA use Norton so I'm thinking why don't they use the freebie? I don't know enough about anything to argue but a wee explanation would be very helpful?

bat999

Hi oxters
With AVG, for example, there is a free version and a paid-for Pro version.
I think that the intention is to let people use the free version at home and if they are satisfied with it they will recommend that their IT department at work installs AVG on the office machines. When companies use AVG they are not allowed to use the free version, so they'll pay the Pro price.
The free version is bait.
That's what I think, anyway.
:cool:

PS Maybe NASA does use Norton, but they also spent 23.4 million dollars to design and build a toilet seat for the Space Shuttle.

Zahc

skiddy2k wrote: »

Kaspersky (and Steganos) still are the best IMO

Whole heartedly agree. IMHO


Zahc

oxters

bat999 wrote: »

Maybe NASA does pay to use Norton, but they also spent $23.4 million dollars to design and build a toilet seat for the Space Shuttle.

Hmmm, Is that an urban myth? You'd need a good c**p for that kind of money! Presumably you wouldn't get a virus while using it?

Alfonso_Skinarelli

When recommending an anti-virus program I always feel it depends on the OP's use of the internet. If you only use the net for checking email and light internet use to recognised safe sites, a free program like AVG or Avast is usually more than adequate. However, if like many others, you like to download music/films and surf the odd 'dodgy' site , a more robust program like NOD32 and or Kaspersky should definately be somewhere in your thinking. It boils down to the level of protection you need. There's no denying that free programs have great appeal but their malware "detection" rates are poor in comparison to the leading "licensed" alteratives.

With regards Norton, I'd have to say the program gets a bum deal most of the time especially on internet forums. While it has undoubtedly caused all manner of problems for many users in the past, one has to bare in mind that as the largest provider of anti-virus software (numbers wise), there's bound to be a disproportionately high number of complaints about the software compared to other programs. The old "resource hog" complaint doesn't hold water these days either as the average new computer has more than enough power to handle a Norton installation.

Lastly, a point worth noting about Steganos. A licensed clone of Kaspersky it may be but I think you'll find the signature updates are 1-2 weeks behind that of it's master.

judderman62

In my experience, we use Norton at work, it's detection rates are poor too. One time at work I did, as a double check, a run on a colleagues PC with Panda's activescan - it found and removed 10 infections !!! Why did Norton not detect these

Alfonso_Skinarelli wrote: »

When recommending an anti-virus program I always feel it depends on the OP's use of the internet. If you only use the net for checking email and light internet use to recognised safe sites, a free program like AVG or Avast is usually more than adequate. However, if like many others, you like to download music/films and surf the odd 'dodgy' site , a more robust program like NOD32 and or Kaspersky should definately be somewhere in your thinking. It boils down to the level of protection you need. There's no denying that free programs have great appeal but their malware "detection" rates are poor in comparison to the leading "licensed" alteratives.

With regards Norton, I'd have to say the program gets a bum deal most of the time especially on internet forums. While it has undoubtedly caused all manner of problems for many users in the past, one has to bare in mind that as the largest provider of anti-virus software (numbers wise), there's bound to be a disproportionately high number of complaints about the software compared to other programs. The old "resource hog" complaint doesn't hold water these days either as the average new computer has more than enough power to handle a Norton installation.

Lastly, a point worth noting about Steganos. A licensed clone of Kaspersky it may be but I think you'll find the signature updates are 1-2 weeks behind that of it's master.

Alfonso_Skinarelli

judderman62 wrote: »

One time at work I did, as a double check, a run on a colleagues PC with Panda's activescan - it found and removed 10 infections !!! Why did Norton not detect these

Unless you can be more specific about what panda found I can't answer that. Different vendors target different things in their signatures so it's sometimes difficult to compare.For example, ActiveScan targets unwanted cookies and "unwanted/risky" applications in it's signatures. Not all anti-virus software targets these.