WalMart Laptop & NIS 2005?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I was lucky enough at 3 am on Friday to have gotten the last HP Laptop WalMart had on special that day for $378! Not a bad machine at all really for that money. Anyhow I have been running Avast! Pro on my main machine under XP x64 and have been very happy with it so far but since this new laptop came with XP Home x32, I can pretty much run any AV I want so I thought I would ask here to see what everyone thought. The machine has an AMD Sempron 2800+ cpu and the Ram is 512mb so I don't think resources should be an issue. I was thinking about trying KAV but I know it is still in beta right now. The machine came with NIS 2005 and while I have grown to hate Norton over the years, this has a 2 month free trial so I am running it now and so far I am pretty impressed over previous Norton versions. It actually believe it or not does not seem like a hog at all, even with all the extra security components over just the AV version. The personal firewall is built in too and it still runs unnoticeably to me. Really strange to be able to say that about a Norton product but I thought I would ask the experts here to get some feedback if it is worth upgrading it to NIS 2006 or just wait for KAV 2006 to be final?

 

Both are solid, top tier applications - basically a dead heat in detection statistics. To me it's a coin toss based on personal preference when the options are this close.

You do mention NIS 2006 vs. KAV 2006, did you mean this or vs. KIS 2006? Just asking since I wouldn't encourage mixing/matching across suites. I've been using the KIS 2006 beta - it's a very solid package, but clearly 1-2 months away from release at this point. Norton is available now, in the event that matters.

Blue

 

Thanks for the reply. I am using NIS 2005 right now as the laptop came with the 2005 version and 2 months of update service free. However I can get the 2006 NIS package for like $49.99 as an upgrade from this 2005 version. Because I am not running the 2006 package I thought I would ask about it. I think it would make sense to just do the 2006 upgrade deal if I choose to keep the Nortons.

Any insight on the 2006 NIS as far as detection & resources go? I was using Mcafee 2005 & PFP 6 prior to my x64 system and was fairly happy with them, but they did not have an x64 version and I then found Avast!. A few years ago I was pretty much convinced that I would most likely never buy another Norton product so I am pretty surprised to find this 2005 version working so well and am wondering if it is just a fluke or if the 2006 version is still good?

Thanks for your input I appreciate it.

 

Stick with Avast. If you have $ to waste, then check out NOD32 or KAV.

I've seen a lot of crappy HP PCs coming out of WMT. Personally, I'd spend a little more $ for an Acer.

 

Atomic_Ed, I would have to agree that either NIS or KIS would be a good choice and I will agree that the newer versions of Nav 2005/2005 do run surprisingly light to be such a large program. I am am running NIS 2005 and am satisfied with it's performance.

 

Thanks for the info. I am glad to hear you agree with my choices. Do you know if NIS 2006 runs as light as 2005 and also do you believe the detection rate is as good as well?

 

From what little I have tried 2006 and from what I have heard it runs as light and as good detection as 2005. to me the biggest difference is the GUI

 

I saw some posts talking about the GUI being different but I could not find any screenshots at symantec to look at. Is it radically different? I noticed 2005 version looks the same even as I remember the 2003 version did. I was thinking their GUI was never going to change.

I just went back over to their site and it looks like I can either renew my defs subscription for $39.99 or buy the 2006 version upgrade for $49.99. For only $10 more it seems to be a logical choice at first glance and I also read somewhere that includes daily updates on the new version. Is there any compelling reason to just renew the 2005 version?

 

as long as the 2005 is working for the two months I would use it but when the trial is up I would upgrade to the 2006 ver. My subscription for my NIS 2005 doesn't expire until 10/26/2006 so I will be useing it for awhile unless I find an unbelieveable deal on 2006

 

Sounds like good advice to me. I will do that and revist right before it expires in January.

Thanks for your input on this.

 

Atomic_Ed, you are more than welcome. anytime I can be of service just let me know.