Norton AV. Renew or not?

[Raify]

I have a few Norton apps on my system (XP Home, bband, router + hardware firewall) including the AV software.

Seeing as I have both a hardware firewall + XP firewall and rarely download email (I view it online), is it worth renewing the AV virus definitions?

What's the PH collective's opinion? Are any of the free AV apps any good? Is it just as easy to rely on the firewall and 'be careful' ?

[FourWheelDrift]

Norton is normally ok when you install it, just try uninstalling it or upgrading it to the latest version. As for renewing that's ok if you've had no problems, but you could try here for one of the better (free) replacements - http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

[Plotloss]

Not

NIS is the AOL of security products.

The free products are perfectly adequate.

[Raify]

I've heard someone else compare it to AOL, but I've honestly had no problems at all :touchwood:

I'm seriously considering un-installing everything and going for a free option...

[.Flyer]

Raify said:

I've heard someone else compare it to AOL, but I've honestly had no problems at all :touchwood: I'm seriously considering un-installing everything and going for a free option...

Funny you should say that, as I've just uninstalled SystemWorks from my main PC today. I have AVG on my Exchange email server and have installed the Pro version on my desktop for evaluation. Looks good so far and considerably less memory footprint than Norton.

[cirks]

Renewed Norton for 2004 and dumped it halfway through when went to Broadband. The router does the firewall stuff, use Spybot just to double check and have AVG Free on the PC. Norton is SLOW, huge footprint, pain in ass to deinstall etc. AVG is absolutely fine. Anyway, if you're with a decent ISP just about all email based virus stuff should be caught by their server software (the only sensible place to have it!). Just use AVG on any other files you're not sure about (realistically how often are you going to open things that you know nothing about?).

You might want to read http://support.metronet.co.uk/security/
for their view of all this

[leosayer]

I tried to upgrade NAV from 2004 to 2005 and the fu**er won't install and I've given up trying to get my $30 back.

What's the best way to uninstall NAV??

[malman]

NOT

Norton AV
Bloaty slow and in my experience doesn't actually work.

What ever happened to Peter Norton? Do they still put his picture on the box (like he had anything to dow with the software thats in it )

McAfee is going this way too except it still seems to work - just slowly

[ultimasimon]

AVG you don't need anything else and its free

[simpo two]

I was happy with NAV until resubscription time - then on the advice of PH and other gurus and got AVG Grisoft instead (17Mb free download). It found stuff NAV didn't, and updates are more frequent. So I have no hesitation in recommending the change.

[petros]

have been using norton but it wont stop trojans. now using avast and it's brill, and FREE. Yes, totally free.

[Trooper2]

Norton A.V.= Bloat.

[meeja]

Norton = Pain in the ar$e.

We had a machine that we needed to remove Norton from.... by reformatting the HDD and starting again!

We use McAfee enterprise..... very happy with it too!