Today's Norton antivirus: unusable by normal humans

Alpha, the CNet Blog ^ | 10/23/2006 | Rafe Needleman

[Swordmaker]

Thanks, Echo, that would help a lot. Certainly easier than doing a dis-in-pest by hand, which I've had to do in the past.

[george76]

" I use AVG-free."

[Echo Talon]

yea the name cracks me up! :D thats how i remembered it ! LOL

[Toby06]

Thanks. i'll look into decrapifier too.

Sounds like a name my brother gives hes software.

[Delta 21]

Three seperate programs each with its own icons in the task bar. Anti-virus and Firewall both start automatically with WinXP but the Anti-spam put an icon in the startup folder.(?)

The anti-spam has defaults for Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape. Euduro and Opera have options but are blanked out. I directed it to Mozilla Thunderbird but I can tell it isnt working 100% yet.

Im gettin upwards of 20 spam e-mails a day. Its the worst its been this century!

[ThomasThomas]

How do you sell your computer on Ebay if it is turned off?

[Echo Talon]

ok.. have you compared the commodo anti-virus to avg free(as far as features)?

like can you set the time of day of the full system scan/what drives are scaned or is that automatically set unless you buy it?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Norton AntiVirus 2007, for $39 (after the $10 promotional coupon he got in e-mail). Sounded good to me.

$39 sounds good?!

AVG Free!
AVG Free!
AVG Free!
AVG Free!
AVG Free!

[discostu]

This isn't a PC/ Mac thing, this is a Norton utilities has been going downhill since Peter sold the company days. Sh!tty software is sh!tty software is sh!tty software, and the Norton utilities crossed the line to be irredemably sh!tty software around 98 or so (at least that was the last version I could tolerate anymore, really all the 32-bit versions were crap), and 8 years later they just keep getting worse. If Needleman has been at the game so long he should know the first (last and only) thing to say when someone asks you for help with Norton is "I'll uninstall it and buy you something better".

[BlazingArizona]

I also use AVG on my 'infidel' machine. I don't run any antivirus on my Mac.

[Space Wrangler]

To All:

AVG A/V and ZoneAlarm Firewall will protect your system as good, if not better than Norton, use 5% of the resources, and cost you nothing. For the VPN user, or anyone requiring a higher level of protection, ZoneAlarm Pro is $30, and money well spent. Norton will ruin your day at some point. If it hasn't yet, then you're due.

[miliantnutcase]

I use ClamWin which is another open source Freeware anti-virus. It has daily update .dat files like the others. Been very pleased so far.

[Delta 21]

I havent compared it to AVG but it seems to have all the bells and whistles that Nortons had. Fully customizeable in the Free version.

It launches from a "launchpad" that accesses 3 or 4 other Comodo products but not the firewall or the anti-spam.(?)

Decrapified and a2 downloading. I need to run Hijackthis and have some geek type read the results. Havent done that since before the last desktop hijack attempt.

Really dreaming of that G-4 now....

[djf]

Agreed. AVG is very good. I did have a trojan once and after I detected it, AVG cleaned it out real nice.

[ConservativeMind]

Norton Antivirus once was the best. That time passed about six years ago.

It is one of the most bloated, buggy programs out there.

[Echo Talon]

a-squared is really just something that you run every now an then.... I mostly run Ad-Aware Se Personal, spybot Search& destroy, and AVG(all of them are free) every once in awhile i will run a-squared free malware scan)

[Echo Talon]

My Main complaints about Norton is the slow bootup times(no matter how fast the machine is) and the random shutdown problems.

[CedarDave]

Ping to your list

[Dick Vomer]

do you have a Mac? I just went over to the MacBook Pro and am loving it. Stuff works. A couple of buggy things with files and getting used to navigation, but it's really sweet.

[Sherri-D]

I see you are following your own advice. :D