Is Norton's Really That Bad?

I'm always hearing horror stories about how it kills system resources and is very slow, but then you see these great reviews of it in Consumer Reports or various PC magazines. I'll be running the system below in a week or two (hopefully) and ordered it with Norton's. I got 4 gigs of RAM, and won't be running more than iTunes, FireFox, Word, (maybe Outlook) and Norton's at the same time. Will my system be majorly slowed down?

Dell XPS M1530
Intel Core 2 Duo T5750(2.0GHz, 667Mhz, 2M L2 Cache)
Tuxedo Black Casing
4GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA+TrueLife LCD with 2.0 MP Camera
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 Ultimate 32-bit Edition
Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy
Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card

 

Norton is by far the most average & the most useless AV i have ever used..it Never saved my comp from an attack or virus attack when needed.

More than that it slowed my computer & crippled it for life until i removed it.

Many people say Norton 2008 is much much better & lot less laggy ...cant comment on the malware detection rate but yes Norton 2008 is much better than older norton antivirus

 

norton is terrible. period

just use avast and comodo firewall

 

Don't listen to the haters

Norton gets the job done. Period. And if you want you can try out the 2009 beta from their website. It's a vast improvement over the 2008 version. And I liked the 2008 version despite some of its issues.

Norton is definitely a more user friendly program than those other ones which are way too complicated and ultimately just don't do the job for me.

 

Norton 2008 is much better and I, personally, see no lagging effect on the system as much as with the previous versions.. this 2008 thing is really better and I would say, the detection rate / protection settings are pretty high and secure too.. I have had no infections or attacks from the time I got this machine (and yes, norton came as a package with the deal I'd got) thought of taking it off, but then since I anyway paid for a super discounted price, I thought I might as well keep it as long as it lasts or as long as I see no effect on system, and I was pleasantly surprised.. hardly feel like its in there in ur system.. as far as I can see, it sits there quietly in the corner on the task bar and goes about its work.. for me I was really surprised with all the Norton bashers, which I could understand with the old versions.. but with 2008, its pretty nice and effective.

Edit: Yeah, as CassilineKnight said, Norton 2008 is very user friendly and easy to configure the settings.. I am not an expert in computers but its really well organized, even for newbies to configure it well..

 

Yep, I used to have Norton's on my computer 5 years back, and it slowed the computer to a crawl. Any first hand accounts of Norton's 2008?

EDIT: Well, well. That was quick for the first hand accounts.

 

Seriously do yourself a favor. go to google, and search for NIS 2009 beta. Download it and try it out for yourself.

Remember it's a BETA. As in it's not the final product. However what they've created so far is amazing given the bad reputation that all these websites and other so called experts wanted to heap onto it.

And as the guy above mentioned I find that their detection rate is very good.

And just so no one thinks I'm biased so far I've tried Kaspersky's 2008 trial, Kaspersky's 2009 BETA, BitDefender 2008 and BD 2009 beta as well as Trend Micro's 2009 beta. ALL of them have had serious issues whether it's slowing my computer down to a drag (Kaspersky and BD), messing up internet connections (Kaspersky and BD), bad user interface (Trend), and horrible customization options (BD and Trend).

As for AVG and avira I've looked into them but I find their products look too complicated and ultimately not what I want in terms of a suite.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antivirus_software

norton is OK, but why pay for norton when you could just use avira? you will stop more viruses, use less resources, and not pay them anything.

 

I would, but I'm literally running a desktop that can't have a security suite on it because it slows it down to a crawl. 512mb of RAM and Pentium processor. Woohoo.
I may install it later on my mom's computer which can actually run a AV program without dieing.

 

Are you planning on getting a new laptop or something soon?

But yeah if you're interested go check it out and possibly download the 2009 beta onto your mom's rig and see how it performs. The install is lighting FAST.

And the UI is pretty well designed. Still needs a few tweaks but if you to the message board you'll see that plenty of people (myself included) have already told them what they should look into changing, etc....

PM if you do think you might want to check it out. I've got some information for you regarding this years version and Vista 32 bit vs Vista 64.

 

Thats nice.. and don't you think it would be better if could kindly share the information with all of us here, so we could learn / understand better? Thanks.

 

Yep, I''m getting a XPS 1530 at some point soon. (check the sig).

 

It really depends on how much effort you are willing to exert to get what you want and how able you are to articulate and quantify what it is that you want.

I had an email from someone who had just upgraded their Windows 98 (probably not 98SE) PC to a new Vista PC that came with a trial of Norton 2008 (3 or 6 months free, too). I said go for it. Minimal setup and interaction; reasonable protection.

What I personally use is documented on my website

 

I'm not sure I understand your post, AKAJohnDoe.

 

Norton is a reasonable choice. You could do far worse.

 

Norton for the home user or small business user was a huge drain on resources a while back. And you had to pay a subscription fee yearly for a good product that slowed everything down.

Maybe Norton have woken up now and realise that AV has come a long way.

Free AV such as AVG, Avast and others are continually making headway with free programs that are actually very good at both detecting and eliminating threats. For the mormal user like you or me.

Norton has been around for a looong time. It's corporate versions were(are) still used by Yahoo etc. for checking incoming attachments etc. It is obviously good in a hectic environment. However, for normal dudes like us...overkill. And slow.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Theo

 

Norton has it's share of haters and fans, and both generally have legitimate reasons.

I have yet to see a problem with Norton 2008.

I have yet to see the 2009 beta.

As a repair tech, I have had issues with every one before that. Here's the rub--for most people, whose machines are appropriate for the product version, Norton is fine and does everything as advertised. It seemed to steadily go down hill from 2003 as they just added code on top of code until the rewrite at 2008 (so maybe they've turned the corner).

But I have seen hundreds of problems with earlier versions.

For some unknown reason, and there does not seem to be a common denominator. I've seen hundreds of PCs where Norton just rolls over and decides its not going to work properly anymore.

I'm not talking about those cases where a malware program specifically targets Norton (being the biggest name in the business, there are several trojans that specifically disable Norton products).

I'm talking about for some reason the program just goes wonky and cripples a machine. Memory usage spikes. CPU processor performance spikes. Internet connections become 100 percent blocked or severely hampered.

There's no rhyme or reason to it--it just does.

I've have seen many more machines where it works just fine.

I can deal with products going wonky...I see it all the time. But, I would not consider a Norton product for two reasons.

a) There customer support stinks. On these machines where I have had to remove and then reinstall Norton (after all, the customer paid for it and still has subscription time left), trying to get a product re-activated can be a major pain. I have literally sat on the phone for 1.5 hours at 2 am trying to get an activation code to reactivate a product. That's just my time on hold! I'm all for protecting intellectual property rights and I have no issue with any company that wants to combat piracy with an activation scheme--but you'd better make it ****ed easy for legitimate users to re-activate! I mean quick and painless.

b) Removing it is sometimes more difficult than removing a freaking rootkit. (same applies to mcafee products). Both companuy's products integrate themselves so deeply into your OS that you cannot just go into add/remove or programs and features....you need a special utility to remove it--and even then, there is all kinds of crap left behind sometimes (working on a machine right now that still has vestiges of Norton on it after running NRT removal tool).

Those two things are simply not acceptable in my book.

Again, I have not seen a 2008 version go bad, or seen 2009 beta at all, so take these experiences with a grain of salt, but when asked I have often jokingly said; "Norton is great until it goes bad---and it will eventually go bad."

 

A well-configured router, software firewall, browser (with scripting crippled), and some common sense will go a lot further than any AV, free or paid.

 

I've heard that Norton 2008 is drastically better in regards to system resource usage. I can't offer first-hand commentary, though.

If I may make a recommendation, I would suggest you look into Kaspersky. I never know it's on until I open it and find that the reports from my scheduled scans are waiting for me to look at. It does its job in the background and I never have to touch it or worry about it.

 

First of all, thanks for the input TeeJay. I'll take that into consideration. Couldn't you just use a program like YourUninstaller 2008 or Revo Uninstaller for uninstallation? They've never failed me before.

To tell you the sad truth, I haven't run an AV program on my current crappy computer in years, and I haven't been infected once. Common sense is the big denominator in that. Not downloading strange files, only from sources you trust makes a big difference.

 

Sorry for the double post, I didn't really feel like editing this in. I've used Kaspersky on my mom's computer, after seeing it recommended in PC Plus a while back. At least for me, the pop-ups I got for updating and renewing were just too annoying. I did like how light it was on system resources, though.

 

I, too, have been using Norton...since about 2004. Switched from McAfee then.

NIS2004-2007 really performs poorly. I used NIS2007 for the longest time, and then tried out NIS2008. My computer was like NIGHT AND DAY...

NIS2008 slows down a PC a little at boot, but I never notice it during normal usage. Maybe that's because I have a fair amount of desktop power to throw at it...but then again my dual core 1.33GHz does not suffer much with NIS2008 either.

I've been trying to get my financée to finally switch to NIS2008 from 2007 and she's gonna have to listen to me soon.

As for NIS itself...I've only had one little bug sneak past recently, and it was a harmless advertisement thingy that was simply removed by rebooting my computer.

If you want to test out some AV, try out the EICAR test. It is a fake virus, but was designed to be a false positive. NIS won't even let you finish downloading it. That's how 'real-time' it is...I do not mind sacrificing a small percentage of performance (that I don't even use!) to get that kind of responsiveness.

 

Thanks for that great analysis, Greg. Rep for you

 

Norton isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's not the best paid anti-virus. It's a decent anti-virus that isn't as good as the top free anti-virus, Avira. I figure if you're actually spending money on one, you might as well go with the top two: NOD32 and Kasp.

 

i say nod32 is the best antivirus i have ever used. it runs quietly in the background and protects me very well. has it's own firewall solution too so no need for another one.

 

I've always used McAfee at work and at home - since using it I've never had a virus infected pc in 6 years (thats after using Norton beforehand) I dont know what the current consumer versions are like but I would recommend. I try to steer clear of the many free AV software - at work we've had a quite a few false positives when testing software (I work with program testers)

 

See, I'm not really spending money on it, I got 15-months free with my XPS 1530, and am trying to decide if I should ditch it when (if ever) my laptop gets here or if I should stick with it.

 

I'd ditch it because Avira free is better and more light weight.

Another thing to keep in mind is that should you choose to uninstall Norton, make sure to get the removal tool.

 

One thing I really hate is there is not easy way to exit Norton. I use Kaspersky Anti Virus, and when I want to play a game I can quickly exit KAV by right clicking on the icon in the system tray.

 

But then it would be easy to accidentally disable it .

AV software isn't going to drain from your gaming experience unless you have an extremely weak CPU.

 

Hey Greg, so have you convinced your fiancee yet??

But yes, people, NIS 2008 is 'really' good 'compared' to the previous versions!! As I mentioned before, I would like to stress that the real time protection is very secure, no reduction in system performance (or a reduction that I can't see anyways, and given my specs, I can understand why I am not seeing any).. Its pretty good. I had ideas of removing it, but now, No.. I am gonna have it as long as my subscription lasts and then decide about what to do next Cheers.

 

Thanks Greg, FondueKid, and everyone else who posted. I think I'm going to stick with it.

 

I downloaded norton 2009 beta, but i cannot get a product key, the site doesn't work for me, gives me some error, any help? And yes i e-mailed their support

 

Did you check your email? Sorry if that's a dumb question. I did the same thing though...

Anyways good luck. Besides a few minor issues I'm loving the beta.

 

Pop-ups? I've never gotten a single one. Is your mother's subscription expired?

 

Stopped using Norton 5 years ago since it did more damage trying to clean and quarantine files than the virus I was infected with did. Just installed KIS ver.8 though.

 

Norton is very terrible.. i used it before.. it constanly lags ur PC..

 

The current Norton Internet Security Suite/NIS 2008 is a decent all-in-one suite imo.
Anyone who still uses the 2007 version and has a valid license key, can upgrade for free to the 2008 version using this link.
The 2008 version of NIS is NOT a resource hog, neither RAM nor your CPU will take a hit as in the old days.

 

It was always "There's a new update for Kaspersky. To download, click here." I probably could have set it to auto-update.

 

Happy to say Avast also stops this thing dead in its tracks by also alerting you while you are busy downloading that it is a virus.

I must say that I am really impressed with Avast so far. It's just the user interface that takes getting used to...

Cheers,
Theo

 

Theo, you can change the Avast GUI with a number of skins to make it look less like a 1998 music/media player program; link.
Cheers.

 

Thanks Baserk......downloaded a different skin and it makes more sense now and is more user friendly.

Cheers,
Theo

 

In case anyone is interested, Avira flat out denyed Eicar before I even downloaded it. I clicked to download the zip file and prior to giving the okay to save it, Avira Guard popped up.

 

I have the same problem: my Norton 360 just expired and now I need new anti virus. I found that Norton 360 was a huge resource hog on my desktop when it had 1 gig Ram and now it's performing better since I added 512 more. HOWEVER, it still causes other problems, as in, it hangs up when I try to shut down. (running XP Pro). It runs better on my Vostro laptop which has 2 gig Ram and XP as well. I only installed the 360 on it since I had several months left on my subscription when I got the laptop. I swore I would get rid of 360 when it expired but now I'm having trouble choosing a new one. NOD32 sounds great, but it's pricey. I may try Avast. I also have one more PC here which only has 1 gig Ram, so I don't want to run anything which would be a resource hog!

 

No matter how good Norton may be, I'd rather spend the money for a license for NOD32.

 

Avast free rocks. That is all I can say.

I have my 'puter back again with an AV that is both free and rock solid

System resource use is less than I had before..

User interface needs much work though. (skins are available) that help.

Happy chappie....yes

Love it

Cheers,
Theo

 

i use webroot antispyware and antivirus