What is Digg?159 Comments
- RichPowers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+51The funny thing is that Norton AV does more damage to your PC - performance wise - than many viruses and spyware.
- davidod87, on 10/12/2007, -4/+49It's complete ***** bloatware. Since I switched to AVG Free, my computer runs 200% faster.
- BTime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+42We don't hate Mac's, just the smug ***** that buy them for display as a social statement.
- burke, on 10/12/2007, -3/+41I've never had a virus because I use Linux and I can't get my wireless drivers working.
- BTime, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40As bad as Norton may be, McAfee is much much worse.
- stonebear, on 10/12/2007, -5/+41I have always considered it a virus on par with AOL. Only someone very naive would let such a program take over their computer.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31How many times have you had this conversation:
Me: You have a virus
User: No, that isn't possible, I have Norton.
Me: OH, you have 2 viruses! - doppler00, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32I hardly ever run an antivirus program on my home machine and here's why:
* I'm not running IE
* I'm behind a firewall
* I know when I'm downloading executable code from the internet and start AV then
* System is patched regularly
* I backup files regularly
Honestly, how often do you actually download a virus from something you got of the internet? The only time I ever got a computer virus was in the late 90's when I put a floppy with a boot record virus into my machine.
The performance burden of anti-virus programs is huge... it is a software hook to every file read/write possible. If you wonder why any of your programs start up so slowly this is why. - Celeron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23http://duggmirror.com/security/20_Reasons_The_World_despises_Norton_Anti_Virus
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Its a simple rule of computing: Never ever install anything with the words "Norton" or "Real" on your computer. Ever.
- .Steven, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21Not that I use AV, but I use NOD32 at a corporate level.
- nobogeys217, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14oh the irony. trying to sell norton on a board of people who hate it and know it sucks.
- Somniis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12If you want free: AVG Anti-virus or Avast.
If you want to pay: NOD32 (very good, and minimal on the system) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15AVG Free is all you need...
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14The link is down so I'll sum it up for you:
#1: Norton is a piece of *****. - striker1211, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Lol norton antivirus for mac... what is it a bitmap that says "No virus found."
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I abandoned Norton and McAffee years ago. Been with AVG for quite a while and it runs well.
The one thing I don't like about AVG is its total system scan. Granted, full scan takes about 25 minutes but it brings the machine to a crawl, and this isn't any slouch of a machine.
What I'd really like to do is hunt down the spam and virus authors and accelerate their deaths through acute lead poisoning. - dirtyhipster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I have to say my start up time was longggggggggggggggggggggg for no reason when i used nortons (almost 8 minutes after started my comp before I could do anything) and ever since I have switched to kaspersky its been about 1-2minutes if that
- MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11On any computer I have ever fixed due to people complaining about it being 'slow', I would find that the problem typically lies in one of the dozen or so (Slight exageration) of processes that it has running eating up massive amounts of memory and or CPU time for no apparent reason.
- code_of_life, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9site down, mirror nearly dead....enjoy!
20. Having to type in your serial number while installing, and then activate it within 20 days of installation.
19. When Norton corrupts downloading files.
18. When Norton uninstalls its self because a virus threatened it.
17. The stupid task bar tool bar thing that has pop-ups the size of greater Atlanta.
16. The live update reminders.
15. The CPU and RAM consuming virus scans.
14. Its inability to delete any virus, even ones that a three-year-old wrote.
13. How it re-adds its self to your computers start up list.
12. When it says you have spyware on your computer, then does nothing.
11. How when it quarantines a virus, it copies it to the folder.
10. If you use it to delete adware it changes your homepage and locks it.
9. After using Norton to delete spyware it tells you that you have to re-install it to open Microsoft Word.
8. The virus definitions in a Mexican health clinic are more up to date than Norton’s.
7. Norton is over hyped and over-priced.
6. Requires a subscription every year.
5. On any operating system other than XP if your computer gets a virus Norton’s only defense is to initiate “the blue screen of doom”
4. If it comes bundled with a computer and you don’t run thorough set up it will pop back up every time you log in.
3. It tried to tell me that dtgeeks was giving me a virus.
2. The latest version blocks ports that are critical to 99.9% of Internet gaming connections.
And now for the number one reason why Norton is despised worldwide:
1. Because after you realize Norton is crap. You will also find the folder is missing the uninstaller, just like many kinds of adware.
Please feel free to correct me about any of these. As always I’m open to suggestion, and will correct any major mistakes.
personally, I used to use symantec corporate for a couple of years, I abandoned it for nod32 since I got fed up of the regular "your antivirus is disabled" messages, and having to reinstall once every few months. Norton updates are now 12.5MB each!!!!
The king is dead, long live the king! - Nerdnic, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15I remember when Norton was actually good. That article was terribly written, though.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8what really pisses me off, being a sys admin, is that when you work with govt contracts, the govt always insists on you having norton installed before they will allow you to vpn into their networks.
- fubes2000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@masamunecyrus
RAM != speed, although it does play it's part.
My beef with norton is that ever since I switched from 2003 to 2006 [because I was FORCED] now norton has an extra 3 to 5 processes running, tracks and complains about things I have configured it NOT to track, notifies me that settings I have personally altered for stability are security risks that need fixing, and ***** MONOPOLIZES a large portion of resources every 10 minutes or so which causes anything I'm doing at the time to grind to a halt.
I'm not an idiot. I don't open every email attachment, I don't download porn.avi.exe [or at least I don't open it], and I provide my own network security. So I don't need Norton wiping my digital ass for me and nitpicking my settings, all I ***** wanted was a small, unobtrusive program like NAV2003 checking in every one in a while to make sure everything is copacetic. Unless I hear something STUNNINGLY good about 2007 [of which I've already seen opposite] I'm going with something else next year, possibly sooner. - striker1211, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"Not true. Symantec and all of its associated processes are only using < 5 MB of RAM on my computer, right now."
Yeah, and 100% CPU when downloading something lol. I don't see how it can be running with less than 5 megs of ram, unless you are using it in text mode and have the shield off. - CJHtxGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7As both the son of the programmer who wrote the original AV tools by symantec (Les Herbst, my father, wrote Symantec Utilities for the Macintosh (SUM) aswell as Symantec Antivrus for the Macintosh (SAM), but thats it... sold company and rights to it), and an agent for geek squad (hey,... sr in high school, far better pay than anything else for my age...), I think i'm qualified in saying the complete validity of this except for the part about Geek Squad handing it out. We are told to reccomend Pc-cillin, but really its the best thing we sell anyway, so its not like we reccomend anything else. Personally I dont run any AV / AS, I simply watch whats running in background and keep my registry clean....
- Somniis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7NOD32: http://www.eset.com/
- garg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Google ads have kicked in and now all the ads on this page are for Norton AV
- Niffer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Kaspersky was rated top of all, that's what I'll stick too. I used AVG free until I read this list, so I tried Kaspersky and it cleaned out a lot of harmless trojans that AVG didn't get. Kaspersky has a pretty low memory footprint too, mine is at 9,028K right now. Check it out.
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/default.asp?id=69&mnu=69
Norton did pretty well, but the program itself sucks beyond belief. I don't trust it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6well i guess you dont download many cracks or torrents.
and i dont av either unless i need too.
i normaly sandbox - cquilliam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I have recently started using Kaspersky Anti-Virus, I have found it quite nice. Not very intrusive, low memory footprint as compared to most big-name anti-virus (>5MB) and it seems really well-designed. Not sure how effective it is yet because as with most people here, I'm very careful in what i download/extract/run so I am very cautious in what my computer is subjected to.
I have also tried NOD32 and found that good as well. - smithpcrepair, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6AOL's Active Virus Shield is based on Kaspersky's AV program. Considering Kaspersky ranks in the 99 percentile for removal rates on a test machine, makes it a great free download.
http://www.activevirusshield.com/antivirus/freeav/index.adp - andy370, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6So what do Digg users suggest as an alternative to Norton for all those people out there who are so out of the loop that they don't know of any other choice for anti-virus?
- garg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I use AVG but I'm still looking for something better. Any suggestions?
- podgey22, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6How about in just one reason:
http://digg.com/software/What_REALLY_slows_down_Windows_Boot_and_run_time - arkmtech, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Real Player Alternative" (installable video codec) is actually acceptible.
But there's no reason to have it - Any serious, mainstream website will *never* use Real for it's streaming video. - SpookyET, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Get Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 and forget about Norton. Kaspersky is the best security company. Nod32 is also good, very good. Number 2 under Kaspersky, but it doesn't have a firewall.
Nod32 Suite will be released next year. It's got a firewall. - daRoach, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6We (Geek Squad) don't hand anyone Norton. We hand them Trend Micro's PC-cillin and SpySweeper. We actually discourage people from using Norton or McAfee.
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists." ... Maybe the host is running NAV. [grin]
- Bren, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Ok, Norton/Symantec, same thing, It's all Symantec now. We manage IT for plenty of businesses here, and the as a matter of policy, we tend to use SAV Corp to protect the network. This was the case when I joined the company, and I've been grumbling about it ever since.
It does, however, work, sort of... In a corporate environment, where one installation is "protecting" many machines, it's not so bad. The thing is, it's the ignorant users that it is "protecting: more than anything.
The problems: It chokes. Way too much for anything that you pay good money for. If it is installed on a fresh server, you'll probably be lucky enough for it work properly (which is not the same as well) for some time. But it will choke. We can't run it for a lot of businesses becasue of the way it drags everything down as it scans files going to and fro. We run AVGs corporate network solution for all of our dentist clients because it slows data transfer so much and clogs things up to the point that things like xray images in a digital clinic get botched up when they do come through, and often SAV slows them down so much, it can crash the system. Most other suites don't have it this bad, it's most likely (hey, I can't say with 100% certainty..) because SAV is so damn bloated.
It breaks, often. I don't care to try to count the times a client brings a machine in that's misbehaving to find that everytime I right click on 'my computer', it initiates a reinstall/repair of Symantec. I mean, what does Symantec think it's doing?
Often, when SAV can't clean a n infection, you end up with a machine that can't browse the net. Everything else works, you can ping, netstat, etc but IE, FF, Mozilla,
just can't find anything. Symantec also does this when it's trying to clean your machine and locks the intarweb down to protect you, then gets eaten by the infection. Guess what? Reformat!
You can't uninstall it. Heck, even on the machines that come with it preloaded, but not fully installed and activated, if you remove it, you have to go digging for the program in the tray that is still running after you've used it's own uninstalled to "remove all".
reformatting is the only way to clean it out, and often your system still remains sluggish while the leftover components try to scan files coming and going to make sure they're clean. often once uninstalled, it's worse because the program can't find all the pieces it needs to do it's job anymore.
Then you have to pay, pay pay, each year. Sure it's not much, but for a single machine, it's useless. At home, you can use any number of other freeware programs that will work better without the performance hit.
I like AVG for those who don't feel comfortable without an AV. When I need to clean a system, so I can retrieve precious pictures of vacations for people, before I reformat the machine, I use sysclean from Trend Micro to wipe out the nasties. Spybot (I know It's a little outdated now, what are the current top of heap ASpywares?), AVG, even McAffee your system a couple of times. Trend also has an online scanner (if your system is healthy enough to find the intarweb) that will use java or a plugin to scan for viruses and spyware which works pretty well for a routine check up. It's free, and you don't have to worry about keeping it up to date.
Plus, most of the research these days into the effectiveness of AV says that the most popular, expensive programs are the worst at protecting you. So find some good free ones, and use more than one.
Then stop clicking on the donkey sex pics. - rooster1056, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7IMHO Symantec/Norton AV is just an untrustworthy piece of software.
I've seen Symantec AV get cratered on our office network at least 3 times now.
We've only had a handful of different viruses come in on emails into our office in the past 11 years, but the program has just been too finicky for me to trust.
When w32Beagle came out, 3 PCs on our network got infected (we got hit with it at 10 am & Symantec released the updated AV signatures for it around 6 pm that evening.) Talk about closing the barn yard gate just a little bit after the horses get out.
About a month ago, the main Symantec AV server simply decided to quit auto-updating its antivirus signatures, forcing me to manually update the AV signatures for the past 4 weeks. Guess what my project is next weekend? Uninstall/reinstall it, update it, and then reconfigure it on all of the workstations. If you wonder why I despise it but still use it, the next paragraph will explain why.
Symantec/Norton is one common (but sadly pathetic) example of what happens all too often in the software business. A developer comes up with an excellent program -- in this case it was Peter Norton and his Norton Utilities. Symantec bought him out and used his name recognition to promote a lot of its products (including its antivirus product). Even if its product isn't quite on par with others, a lot of people will purchase it due to name recognition. (Now, guess who didn't get to call the shots on buying AV software for our office.)
I've been involved with antivirus software since about 1990. I often get asked by people, "What's the best product out there?" Unfortunately, this isn't easily answered. Everybody has their good and bad stories for any piece of software (AV software included). Kind of reminds me of Ford fans / Chevy fans, baseball fans / Nascar fans, and less filling / tastes great..... :o)
My personal favorite for right now (key phrase --> right now) is AVG free edition. It's easy to set up, it's free, you can easily tell if the AV signatures are out of date, and did I mention -- it's free? - cyberrigger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Is it Norton that you hate,
or the fact that the OS you use requires it? - glafira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What Only 20?
- rockchops, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I would have to disagree with the anti-NAV opinion in this article/thread, purely as a system administrator. Symantic AV / Norton AV is a good choice for businesses. We use the Corporate Ed. where I work along with the Symantic System Center Console. We still use version 9, which is considered legacy now, but still recieves updates ocassionally. Management is very easy, and installations are quick. This is a bation for imaging multiple systems. Central management is key. As for the perfomance cost, considering that the majority of work people in the office is along the lines of simple word processing and web surfing, the performance drop is hardly noticable, and completely worth it at that. Reason being the purpose of an AV in the business world is to prevent the company network from being brought to its knees, and also merely to extend time in between maintainence calls.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What, you mean like the BBC? Unfortunately even they stream in Real and WMV. And it will probably get a lot worse for Mac/Linux users because the BBC have signed a deal with Microsoft for digital distribution
- cyberrigger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Linux
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/ - unitedstatians, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3An excellent article, on why to Remove Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus *completely* and all it's Residue Safely
http://uvolusion.blogspot.com/2006/05/want-to-remove-symantecs-norton-anti.html - lcohiomatty86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3people dont really kno any better because norton advertises SO much.. that and bundling their software with alot of the major PC distributors. alot of people in this country only know about norton and not about AVG, NOD32 etc...
- zxcv12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I almost feel bad for Peter Norton. The guy had a solid product and a decent reputation within the IT world. Now his name is a synonym for bloatware/malware. At least he got his picture off the box. I guess that is the risk you take when you let somebody else use your name. Let this be a cautionary tale for you young guys.
- sniffer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Beeing on the IT business for 7 year's by now, here are my 2 cent of opinion. Hope this clears some minds.
Norton 2006 / 7 = Good looking, interesting features, Resource Hog and ultimately Bloatware
McAfee (Any version) : interesting product, not so good as Norton, but good nonetheless. Also a resource hog and bad interface.
Symantec AV Corporate Edition: The very best if you want a efficient anti virus with some anti-spy ware features. Minimal system impact but minimalist interface.
AVG: It does it job for free, minimalist interface, minimal impact on system and slow on scanning.
Avast: The same said on AVG applies here, but the interface is just horrible.
Kaspersky: The very best if you want anti-virus with a firewall. Minimal impact on system, Interface simple but not ugly but expensive.:(
Avira Antivir: a recent surprise, does it job very well (better than Norton Corporate), free, minimal impact on system, interface minimalist but not ugly.
Conclusion:
Recommended in order:
1 - Kaspersky
2 - Avira Antivir
3- Symantec AV Corporate Edition
All the others have their value but i won't recommend them although i would like to give credit to AVG and AVAST for their efforts on trying to provide us with a free AV alternative. - nstern2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I Personally work at a geek squad and know for a fact that at out precinct we are not to tell the customer to buy Norton. We usually tell them to go with pccillin and spy sweeper. Most of the time it is the precinct's choice on what antispyware/virus that they want to push on the customer.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 156 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is