Spyware, viruses, & security forum: Need a new anti-virus and Internet protection

I used the Norton/Symantec product for two years, and I religiously brought up the control panel as my first task after booting up each day to check that the application was functioning and to manually download any updates. I was never happy with the Norton product because it seemed clunky to use and could be unpredictable, and then I begin reading posts to this forum and elsewhere questioning how effective the product was.

I switched to ZoneLabs (www.zonelabs.com) ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite when my subscription came up for renewal, and the first ZoneAlarm scan revealed 17 viruses and one piece of spyware that Norton had failed to detect. More important, my HP LaserJet 2550L had stopped working before I acquired ZoneAlarm, and since all of the HP-recommended troubleshooting I had tried had failed, I had resigned myself to paying for service. After the first ZoneAlarm scan, the printer was completely resurrected--apparently some of the malware that Norton had failed to protect me from had targeted my printer.

Do yourself a favor and buy ZoneAlarm--the Norton product is not only a waste of money, but it is dangerous because you think you are getting protection that is really not there. I'm not alone in my recommendation of ZoneAlarm; it was one of the top two recommended anti-virus products in the September, 2006, edition of Consumer Reports and it has won a bushel of awards from top industry trade publications.
Rgds/John

Some people swear by Norton, others at it. I uninstalled mine (and if you choose to, use the removal tool available at the Symantec site to finish off the uninstall.) But overall, if you like it, and are happy using it, and (most crucially) it behaves (plays well with) your other programs, you might elect to keep it. All AV's (and antispywares) will sometimes pick up stuff the others have missed. Ones I've used are Norton, AVG, Avira, WinClam, Avast, and DrWeb Cureit. Currently using Avast. It's free, and offers pretty good protection, IMO. See no reason to change. In the pay-for-it playing field, NOD32 and Kaspersky get consistently good reviews, though I've never tried them. NOD particularly, has a reputation for excellent protection without slowing down the system.
If you get stand alone applications, rather than a suite, I've found that a combo of Avast, Comodo Firewall, and SpywareTerminator plus a couple of immunisers and monitors has kept me malware free for a year+. All free.

You need to get it at http://free.grisoft.com

Support for AVG v7.1 will stop tomorrow 18th February
This means, users can still enjoy free AVG as long as you upgrade (free upgrade too!) to supported version which v7.5
See their news page: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/21/lng/us/tpl/v5