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Norton Anti-Virus = Not a good thing

Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 2:35 pm
by brado426
I just wanted to agree with Enrique regarding Norton Anti-Virus. In my professional experience, it is the worst virus scanner ever created. Norton Internet Security as a suite is even worse.

These product slow down PC's significantly. When I encounter someone using NIS that is complaining of slowness, my first recommendation is to uninstall Norton Internet Security and switch to something that does not negatively affect the user's experience.

Trend Micro's virus scanner does an excellent job of remaining invisible while still offering the necessary protection.

This is not an advertisement for Trend Micro (I have no affiliation with this company).... just my personal experience.

Brad O.

Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 3:51 pm
by russellhltn
There's Norton (typically marketed to the home market) and there's Symantec (I think typically marketed to the business market). The two are not the same even though they come from the same company. In other words, please do not confuse Norton Anti-virus with Symantec Anti-virus.

Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 11:09 pm
by brado426
Ah... I'm glad you clarified that. I am only speaking from my experience with Norton Anti-Virus (apparently the home-marketed version.)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 10:13 am
by mkmurray
I subscribe to PCWorld magazine, and they have the exact opposite preferences for antivirus software than you do, brado426. Perhaps Symantec/Norton has really improved their latest version. I also thought it was interesting their low rating of TrendMicro's software. I've never used it myself. Just thought the results were interesting.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13086 ... ticle.html

Russell, I know what you are talking about regarding Symantec/Norton, but in this article they refer to it by both names. Do you know if the company is trying to shake the split image?

Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 6:31 pm
by thedqs
As for one who has used most of the name brands (Trend-Micro, McAfee, Norton, Symantic, AVG) the least intrusive was AVG and only during the daily system scan (from 1 to 6 am) would I notice any affect from it (Most it would use it 2% CPU and 30 MB of memory). Nice thing is that for home use AVG's scanner is free. Also Trend-Micro wouldn't uninstall which was annoying. Both McAfee and Norton in my experence slow down the computer because it was constantly scanning the hard disk, virtual memory and the operations of the executing programs.

Anyway that is my experences with these programs and it is only posted here as an informative comparision and not as a promotion. If it helps my computer is a P4-D 3 GHz 1 GB 4200 DDR2 with 750 GB of hard disk space running windows xp (or vista sometimes).

Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 8:02 pm
by brado426
mkmurray wrote:I subscribe to PCWorld magazine, and they have the exact opposite preferences for antivirus software than you do, brado426. Perhaps Symantec/Norton has really improved their latest version. I also thought it was interesting their low rating of TrendMicro's software. I've never used it myself. Just thought the results were interesting.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13086 ... ticle.html

Russell, I know what you are talking about regarding Symantec/Norton, but in this article they refer to it by both names. Do you know if the company is trying to shake the split image?

I think PC World is taking bribes from Symantec or something, because every exposure I have ever had to it has been disastrous. :)

Brad O.

Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 10:10 pm
by mkmurray
brado426 wrote:I think PC World is taking bribes from Symantec or something, because every exposure I have ever had to it has been disastrous. :)

Brad O.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a little financial messaging of some of the rankings.

Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 10:42 pm
by JamesAnderson
I have been at my FHC and the combination of the antivirus and the filtering program for FHCs are very effective. No slowups on even the old castoff PCs they often get, not even on the one Dell XP box they have either.

Someone from Ancestry was speaking about things at the PAF user group meeting some time back here and he advised against using AVG because of spyware that allegedly came with it. Not a really bad spyware item, but one that should be taken seriously nonetheless. One of the spyware trappers I run has AVG in their database of known spyware spreaders.

Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 8:20 am
by mkmurray
JamesAnderson wrote:I have been at my FHC and the combination of the antivirus and the filtering program for FHCs are very effective. No slowups on even the old castoff PCs they often get, not even on the one Dell XP box they have either.

Someone from Ancestry was speaking about things at the PAF user group meeting some time back here and he advised against using AVG because of spyware that allegedly came with it. Not a really bad spyware item, but one that should be taken seriously nonetheless. One of the spyware trappers I run has AVG in their database of known spyware spreaders.
Do you happen to know more information about the AVG spyware component? I have installed AVG in the past and would like to verify that it has been completely removed.

Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 8:45 am
by russellhltn
mkmurray wrote:Russell, I know what you are talking about regarding Symantec/Norton, but in this article they refer to it by both names. Do you know if the company is trying to shake the split image?
No clue. My experience is with "Symantec Antivirus" (corporate edition). I've found it acceptable. It can slow things down during boot-up and just afterwords as it tends to do a start-up scan. Once that's done, I've not had any major problems with performance. I have had to set exceptions to keep it's hands out of SQL data files as I've had some cases where SQL catches Symantec with it's hands on the file and it corrupts the file.

What the church is having us load is the same product.


I notice what's sold in the stores is "Norton". I've also heard from other users that the business and home versions are different and the experiences are quite different.