Norton Antivirus/not so bad!

Hi Wake,

I have both Norton 2005 AV & Firewall. To date I've had no problems with the live update feature. However, being on dial up I had problems with both AV & Firewall deactivating & having to reregister them when I first installed them (3 times) Norton soon issued a quick fix download for that issue.

HR

 

I'll throw in my 2 cents. I'm a computer consultant who's day to day routine is small to medium sized business networks. Be it a stand alone PC, to a network of a dozen, two dozen, some clients up close to a hundred PCs. Every type of business out there, law firms, dentists, resorts, home health care, various non-profits, a couple of schools, yacht brokers, doctors offices, manufacturing, research labs, etc etc.

I used to be all Symantec. Never liked McAfee (home version or enterprise versions) (which seems to be about 50% pre-installed OEM, Symantec retail the other 50% pre-installed). I loved the Symantec retail home consumer version up til around version 2003. Right around that time, it seemed to get quite bloated (slowing systems down). The past couple of years I've focused the core of my business on business networks, so I've been working more with the business versions of antivirus, up til the past year my fave was still Symantec Corp Edition. Centralized management was key to me, and Sym CE/SBE was still IMO performing much better than their home retail product, less of a system performance hit too. When it gained 88 thousand pounds of bloat with version 10, I officially stopped selling any more, clients coming up for renewal will be getting NOD32.

Now I'll try to get back on topic since I strayed a bit...and this relates to a trend in the computer industry. "The big guy is targeted by the threats". Wether it's operating systems, web browsers, or AV programs...the top guy is in the crosshairs of the troublemakers. Some viruses/worms out there are specifically coded to knock out services of popular antivirus programs. The millisecond one hits a system, it tries to do a "one two" punch to knock out the real time protection, and/or hamper the live update service. A healthy system could have a hard time shrugging it off, not to mention a somewhat already compromised system. As other brands become more popular, surely they'll be targeted also. Just like Firefox was the browser for those who wanted to be trendy anti-Microsoft, it started out safe, but as it gained in popularity over the past year...surely enough it's had threats come out over the past few months targeting it.

Uninstalling Symantec products isn't all too tough. They have special removal tools (how many other antivirus brands provide those for you, eh?) and....on their support site they always have VERY details manual removal instructions (again...how many other antivirus brands provide that for you too?). It's quite easy to manually remove compared to say...a McAfee product.

Symantecs support website is the best out there IMO. Any issue or error you can come up with (and believe me, in all my years working in IT, I've come across them)...the solution will be found on their site if one has some ambition to look.

This past year is a big turn around year for antivirus brands....as far as changing/evolving their product to help in the battle against malware other than viruses/worms....meaning trojans/adware/spyware, etc. Symantec hasn't been all too strong in this area and their most recent versions...so unfortunately they get the raw end of the deal when people compare their products against the latest and greatest of other brands.

I will say one thing though, their Corporate Edition/Small Business Edition has an excellent setup routine and management console. Very intuitive, and makes for easy rollouts and client management.

Prior to Symantec Corp Edition being my preferred network antivirus product, which it became around version..oh..hmm....7 or so, I used to use InnocuLAN...a CAI product.

I've come across quite the wide range of AV products over the years, both in stand alone home versions, and business network versions. I'm shocked at how many people who claim to be in IT have barely heard of 2-3 other brands once you get outside of Symantec and McAfee.

 

Hi HardRocker

Problem I had with live update in NIS2005
and SystemWorksPremier2005 was that I bought
them soon after release think was October 2004
and Symantec released a new version of their live
update module same month, it never showed up as
available via live update in the programs I had,
and it never showed as available at the Symantec
website until about a week after I installed these
programs, once I found it there and did the upgrade
live update has worked fine since, and I never had
the deactivation problem you mention glad is resolved.

Wake

 

Although I am using KAV 5 Personal now (and of course this could change any minute, being as fickled I am when it comes to AVs ) I've used several NAV versions, including NAV 2005. I've never had any problems with NAV on this old Athlon 700, 512 RAM machine. As a matter of fact, it loaded up a lot faster on my computer than KAV 5 with its startup scanner. Never had problems with Live Update either.

I ran weekly scans and everything was alway clean. I would double check by scanning with Ewido. It never found anything either. So I guess NAV was doing it job quite well.

The only thing I don't like about NAV is the weekly updates. I know you can download the IU/RapidReleases, but I always felt that Symantec should update NAV daily as part of it's normal operation. Maybe a small thing, but that's my little pet peeve. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to NAV one of these days.

 

The only thing I don't like about NAV is the weekly updates. I know you can download the IU/RapidReleases, but I always felt that Symantec should update NAV daily as part of it's normal operation. Maybe a small thing, but that's my little pet peeve. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to NAV one of these days.[/QUOTE]
Maybe things will change when Microsoft enters the market. As people are unhappy with a number of Antivirus products and companies will have to be more responsive to protect market share.

 

I have had Nav installed for about thirty hours and it has been updated four times. That is a lot better than once a week.

 

In this last days we see a lot of incoming threats, so it's normal that Norton released that number of updates...

 

Now that I have run norton a few days I have come to the conclusion that I like it. It scans faster than Kav5 and almost but not quite as fast as Nod. Absolutley no slow down on my system at all. Might have to keep it.

 

Let's see now, for you BigC, "keeping it" means for 2-3 hours!

Acadia

 

I found NOD scanned almost twice as fast on my system as NAV. But NAV is a good program and not confusing for people new to computers.

 

it rele depends on ur system. i find that norton's scanning speed runs parallel with how fast the computer is its running on, whereas nod32 is usually fast on any computer. on a P3 (750mhz) comp NAV usually took 45min to an hour. otoh on one of my newer computers (either athlon xp or 64) NAV took 15-20 min. it also depends on the amount of files on the hd.

agreed, it is user friendly and relatively simple to access options/tasks.

 

It's very strange how moods change when people talk about Symantec products. There are times one might think Norton is the greatest rip off ever created by marketing, or a convincing product given its market leadership. If anything the diversity in opinions only confirms the lack of reliability of any internet based information (and I'm not indirectly criticising the Wilderssecurity community). It's a bit depressing because I often have the feeling of knowing much less about a product potential after reading extensively about it, there doesn't seem to be consensus about anything anymore.

NIS has been my first security suite ever and I had it for 8 months. No malware has entered my computer apart from the occasional spyware. I kept NAV always updated and it has stopped at least 4-5 viruses weekly from downloading through my e-mails (my system has been checked regularly by reputable on line scanners, just to be on the safe side).

The reasons I changed to another product are not related to virus infections.
It would take ages to send e-mails using NAV and when files were approaching 1MB I was inevitably receiving an error window from NAV suggesting something was wrong with my mail provider!
I've tried to rectify this problem to no avail. I had to disable NAV and NFW temporarily in order to send my e-mails. Adding the fact that Symantec tech support is notoriously unavailable, I thought perhaps I should try another product.

 

Hi bigc. Please continue to keep us informed on your experience with NAV. I for one am very interested.

Thank you,

Graystoke

 

Osaban,

Don't discount the possibility that diametrically opposed opinions on a piece of software could both be reflective of the users experience and correct, but that they reflect distinctly different circumstances.

The specific selection of running processes that you choose creates a unique operating environment. Some combinations may be stable to certain types of challenges, some less so. There could be a multitude of additional factors and reasons at work - but the key thing to bear in mind is that when there are conflicting observations, don't assume one is right and one is wrong, both may be true to the local circumstances at work.

Blue

 

Well it has been on here a few days and it seems to be a very well behaved program. It hasn't given me any unwanted surprises and has alerted me that it had deleted to malware while searching the web. It updates as it should and still does not slow my comp down. I REALLY STILL CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHY THERE ARE SOME THAT SEEM TO BE ON A MISSION JUST TO BASH NORTON. I have used just about every antivirus known to man including several corporate versions and none of them run any smoother than norton does on this machine. The only thing that I have noticed is that it takes about fifteen seconds to boot up tne comp. But that is not much extra time,besides I am not in that much of a hurry anyways.

 

My two big complaints when I tried Norton was this (link here) . See post one and two. I like to organize my start menu... The other is that Norton doesn't seem to like parts of my Creative Audigy ZS2 divers/software.

 

Well unfortunatly that is the case sometimes not all systems are compatable with all software. There are a couple of programs that don't like my comp. But at least we have a pretty good choice of programs to use

 

I had removed Nav 2005 simply because I am always testing different av's. Well I have reinstalled Nav 2005 and norton firewall and norton utilities simply because it runs better on my comp than any other av I have tried. I won't mention any competing products but even F-#### doesn't run any smoother on here. I will admit it takes up a bit of space on the Hdd but I have a lot of free space to play with. And just because it is a large program doesn't mean it uses all of your resources up. It is actually useing less resources than Kav or Mcafee and both of those run just fine.All in all I am extremely satisfied with the performance and detection rates.

bigc

 

I just installed NSW 2005 today. I purchased it last September. Although it ran fine on my computer, I uninstalled it to try other AVs, including BitDefender, McAfee VS9 and KAV 5. After reading this thread, I decided to install NSW, mainly NAV 2005, again. I've come to the conclusion that it runs smoother on my computer than some of the others I've tried. It also loads faster than a couple of the others.

 

Anyone know when the public beta for NAV 2006 is scheduled to begin? Should be around July 1 correct?

 

Did you solve the mailproblem?
Same problem at me.
I can not access (work wirh ) my mailserver.
It is possible to go to internet, but server works not oryou have to wait ages to send a mail.

 

Well, as of today i have seen another computer being infected with Norton installed.
My friend had Norton 2004 installed. And After a ewido scan there were 4 - 5 trojan on his computer. Norton on access detected one but could do nothing about it.

He has both Norton Internet security and Norton AV installed. The trojan is nothing serious, just downloaded about 2xx adware on to his computer and seriously slow down his computer.

What i dont understand is how did he get infected in the first place. And then Norton detect it while it was running.

Anyway i have now fixed nearly 20 of my fds computer. I installed avast on all of them. And tell them to use firefox ( By now i personally think it is far more important than anything else!! )

Let see how it goes after a few months....

 

Hm I dont think they have a good grasp on reality.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/jun2005/tc20050617_1613_tc024.htm?chan=tc&

I'm sure all the systems I get in here running norton with virii on them would disagree with you also.

 

webmedic, that article pertains to all security products not just symantec. It just mentioned symantec and mcafee because as they said they are the largest antivirus companys as of now. They also mentioned microsoft as an example.