Norton is the best Antivirus-Do you think about this?

Well, I had Norton System Works 2003 on this PC (400Mhz PII, 128MB RAM) and it slowed it down quite a bit, after uninstallation, it broke my internet connection (Totally killed the DHCP service.) And had a heck of a time getitng that back, I really don't like Norton that much personally, even though it does have some good detection rates, I like a very light AV.

 

In fact, it doesn't. Symantec corp, they are expert at advertising **************, not at antivirus and security software development.


edited for TOS 7/21/2004 - BlueZannetti

 

I concur.

 

dear Acadia, i agree with you completely when you say "what works BEST for you is the BEST". if in anyway you found NAV to be working nicely with you then its best for you. there is no need to pay any heed if someone else is trying to force his/her opinion into you. just make sure you're safe and secured. i always say this again and again, as long as you know what you're doing you're better off even without an AV.

please don't start bashing the product ladies and gentlemen. specially don't make comments such as "A person who really understands about security issues would never pick up Norton as his/her antivirus solution". i know some virus experts using this product and i do have respects for their choice.

 

The problem with Norton is its memory usage and system resource utilization.
Once i installed Norton, regardless of what Norton product it was, it ate my whole CPU. I saw 100% CPU usage in the XP task manager!
Symantec is making their products eat up more CPU power than saving it for other programs.
Anybody using Norton on P4 CPUs should upgrade to at least 1GB of RAM and higher. Or if you are a power demanding computer user, get a P4 CPU with HT technology!
what works BEST for you is the BEST

 

Agreed with Nadirah - there is no "best" antivirus. They've all got strong points and weak points - NOD's sub-par trojan detection, Avast's lack of heuristics, AntiVir's false positives, Norton's excessive bloat, etc.

 

Do you think that Norton has really the best description or removal tools for viruses? Is there any better company?

And how much memory does norton take?

 

Probably correct if your AV is slowing down your computer but not recommeded for a layered defense

More importantly, Amrx, we would have much less to discuss here

 

Norton will eat up all your CPU power, its a real monster.

 

I use AVG and I think it is a fine virus killer.

Easy to update, a scan is only 8 mins long and I have very rarely been infected, and never seriously.

I suppose it is the same as anything really -- if you go looking for viruses you will find them.

The best way to not get infected in the first place is to exercise a bit of common sense.

Watch where you go, what you download, check file extensions before you double click, if you don't trust it don't open it and make sure you update on a daily basis - a 2 minute task. Periodically get a second opinion from Housecall or Panda Activescan. Set Windows to auto-update on critical updates.

That's probably as effective as any AV tool.

 

Granted, it's a Symantec app, but the CPU usage monitor in System Doctor reports an average of less than 20% usage with NAV running on my W98SE system.

 

Well in general Norton is ok antivirus,but nothing more. Uses way too much memory/CPU time,loads 10 services/processes (usually AVs use 2-4 processes max),has huge problems with its update part called LiveUpdate and its almost impossible to remove it entirely from the machine. Its detection capabilities ae also very low. It can detect majority of current ITW samples,but older ones and trojans are usually not detected at all. There is lots of free AVs that offer much better characteristics then Norton (AntiVir,avast!,AVG,Panda Platinum 7(Free one)) and many more better commercial AVs like Kaspersky or F-Prot.

 

Can someone answer me on my question?

 

Well specific removal tools are basically all good. I prefer avast!-s Virus Cleaner because it can clean several infections with one utility. There are also others similar (McAfee STINGER,Panda QuickClean). These clean a very specific things so if they say they clean MyDoom they will all do the same job. Even Norton Removal Tools are nice and they are also very simple to use. These are probably the only programs worth using from Symantec...

Virus descriptions are also detailed enough so they give you enough informations. Also very good.

Yes,there is many better companies then Symantec. ESET,Frisk,McAfee,Kaspersky and many others that offer free AVs like avast! (their commercial one is very good too),the same is with GriSoft and their AVG.
H+BEDV AntiVir is also a very good AV if we don't think about update system which is awful.

Norton Antiirus 2003 was probably the best of all NAVs. 2004 was the most terrible. NAV2005 is coming back on track,but its still full of problems (too much running processes and pretty high memory usage,30megs and more)

 

Thanx, and which company has the best virus description?

 

Symantec has quiet good descriptions,but i usually prefer http://www.viruslist.com also found on my webpage. It has probably the largest virus database with a search engine.

 

I don't know how much memory Norton takes but it is a huge program on the hard drive, something like 40mb. NOD, on the other hand is only about 4-5mb and I can vouch is quite light on the resources. With this Forum you might find better Tech Support for NOD then you would contacting the Norton site for Norton support. Good luck.

Acadia

 

Yeah. You could do a lot better with either NOD or KAV. It's been my experience that both Norton and McAffee use quite a bit of PC resources. KAV isn't too light in that regard either, but with KAV you get something in return - excellent virus and trojan detection.

 

I have to answer someone who's saying that Norton uses just 8 mb and has the largest virus web database and description and the best removal tools.

 

If you use Nod you shouldn't need removal tools.

On the other hand if you are looking, Nod also has FREE removal tools, see:

http://www.nod32.ch/download/tools.stm

Good virus deffinitions can be found also at Sophos:

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/

Cheers

 

Also see the following thread, posts 5 and 6:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=223821#post223821

Here you have 2 resellers of Nod32 (myself being one) that give their opinion of Norton and why they have that opinion...

Ultimately, if you are trying to convince someone, they equally can be convinced into something else, they have to do their own research and make their own decisions, unless of course they are already in the middle of a mess and are being pig headed, see the following thread and post #14:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=42183

Cheers

 

I use F-secure.

 

dear kloshar, if someone said Norton uses just 8MB then probably he/she is using a very very old version, which i don't remember. i agree with RejZor, that Kaspersky site has a huge database and your F-Secure has a nice one too.

 

Isn't the Sophos's and F-prot's the largest database?

By the way:

Thanx for all answers!

 

RAV, for one, has a larger database than F-Prot's. KAV might as well, though I'm not sure about that.

Sophos I don't know about, but it probably has a huge number of signatures...