PC utilities forum: Norton AntiVirus 2006 or McAfee VirusScan 2006?

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Avg is great. I just bought a new computer and has McAfee as a trial for 90 days I am using it for now but will go back to AVG so simple to use and does a very good job!

Neither one. Both are too bloated and too intrusive. Try Kaspersky AV or NOD32 both rated as No 1 or 2 by independant rating labs.

Of the 2 choices, McAfee or Norton, the answer depends on your use. McAfee is first to protect against viruses (nearly a week ahead of Norton in many cases), has a better spyware catcher, but with a much larger overhead then Norton.
Norton (Symantec) believes that their bread and butter is from the Home users and would rather have speed then better protection. This would be very accurate for those Dial-up users that got on - got what they needed - and got off the internet. If you are one of those users then by all means Norton is a great choice.
McAfee on the other hand focuses on the business clients, and fluffs up a special addition for home. You benifit from their hyper security, but lose a bit more speed and money.
For us - its a cost on support. McAfee has the least amount of time/$ spent supporting machines with there product, while Norton is a regular cash flow. Here is an e-mail about W32.Sober.X@mm!zip that only plagued Norton users. Names were removed for fairness. Notice that it took them 25 days on a Corporate Gold Support contract to answer, and on phone support they did less.
-----Original Message-----
From: Symantec Service and Support [mailto:tsnews@symantec.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 3:10 PM
To:
Subject: Re: W32.Sober.X@mm!zip


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On "Fri, 2 Dec 2005 16:17:29 +0000 (UTC), Bradley P. Bumsted wrote:

> Configuration Information:
> Product: Symantec Mail Security
>
> The mail security 4.6 is not stopping the virus from reachig the end
> users. However the desktop (10.0) is catching it.
> Last Live update for 4.6 was 11/26 Rev. 3 How do we addres this?

Symantec Technical Support:

The definition set should be updated by now, and should be able to remove the virus infection. Additionally, it is important to understand that the sober.x virus uses its own SMTP engine and can therefore bypass exchange and mail security altogether. Blocking against zips will prevent it from getting to you.

Best Regards,

Enterprise Support Technician
Symantec Corporation

Been using Norton Antivirus (recently norton symantec systemworks) for years, along with a decent firewall (zonealarm), and i've never had problems.

Definately norton, hands-down. Big hater of mcafee

I have been a Norton Systemworks user for many years. However, I am in the process of dropping all Norton products. I have found their support is difficult to use in a timely manner; takes days to get an answer to problems. The other reason is, they have really have increased their renewal price; costs near the original price and you must purchase one copy for each PC that you own and I own three PC so the cost to continue upgrading is way out of line since the changes are minor per release. Oh, they add new features, but many of them, and I suspect that others may feel the same way, will not need or use those features.

Because I am a current user of Comcast for my Internet connections, Comcast has joined with McAfee and as long as youre an active customer to can use a copy of McAfees virus software and this is saving me money. I have installed McAfees virus software on my three PCs and so far everything is working just fine. I might add that it picked up a Trojan that Nortons virus program missed. I have also started using System Mechanic 6 by iolo that will replace the functions of Systemworks and I might add, does a better job and cost less.

Just had to reply to this. I had this (eTrust) for several years on my machine, running Windows 98. and guess what, I was soooooooo infected that I eventually had to get a new machine. I use McAfee my self and no problems so far

While I've never used McAfee, friends tell me it suffers the same problem I've always found with Norton: *massive* memory hogging. If you value your sanity, don't install any Norton version more recent than 2002 on a machine with less than 512MB of RAM.

Also with McAfee, bear in mind that a couple of months back, they unleashed a defective update to their virus definitions, which caused many people to inadvertently hose their systems. (Then again, you might see this as a good thing, as McAfee has been 'predisastered'. And there's no reason Norton couldn't do the same thing tomorrow...)

My personal gripe with Norton is that it doesn't play well in a security-conscious environment. I always try to have the day-to-day usage of a Windows PC done under a Limited User account (I consider this a simpler and more reliable security measure than any antivirus, BTW) - but Norton's automatic LiveUpdate doesn't support this setup, it will only work when you are logged-in as an Administrator-level user. To undermine security best-practice in this way is, IMHO, unforgiveable of a security-focused application.

At home, I use AVG Free Edition. While free AV applications seem to have a whiff of stigma about them, this one has really opened my eyes. It updates itself faithfully every logon, is simple to use and configure, and the memory usage is the lowest I've yet encountered. Even while scanning it's possible to continue working at the same time at a reasonable speed. And yes, its detection-rate is up there with the biggies!

Others I've tried include BitDefender Professional Edition, which worked pretty smoothly and has a super-high detection rate (so I read), with medium memory requirements; and Avast! free AV, which although it has the sexiest interface of the lot and good hit-rate, I found another very heavy memory-hog.

/rant over - hope it was some help

or at least, no more so than most other applications. I'm referring more to the permanent system overhead imposed by Norton's processes running in the background. On a 256MB machine, Norton Internet Security 2005 is just too painful to run the whole suite. It adds a hefty chunk to boot-time as well.

NAV 2003 (without the rest of the suite), I don't think we used that one, but based on experience with '02 and '05, it would probably be tolerable on a 256MB machine, though there would still be a palpable slowdown.

XTGold has been much improved on-I had a registered version of the old XtreeGold.

Go to this website-download it and try it.
http://www.ztree.com/

If you loved Xtree you will love Ztree

Bad Apples

I've been trying out AVG combination anti-virus and firewall. It seems to be working fine...and the cost is less than Norton/Zone AlarmPro.
I'm no computer expert, when I say it's working ok I really assuming it is. I wondered if anyone else is using this version of AVG and what you think.

so far, the trial is almost up so I'll have to buy it or go back to the freebe....I like the combo part, both firewall and antivirus...uses less resources. I just downloaded and saved AdawareSE Firewall, free version, I haven't used it but I think I'll start a thread see what people think of it. The spyware is excellent.

AVG may have worked well, but I CONNOT REMOVE IT from my computer using control panel, add or remove program and it's really messing my email program up.