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It seems that most users HATE Symantec with a PASSION. This hatred is on par with users hatred of the Microsoft Corporation.(I understand why we hate Microsoft)

Norton is not the best Product, but it is also not the worst. Yet users talk like it is the worst ever.
Is Norton a victim of its own slick false advertising or what? Other AV software may rate lower in how effective they are, but dont cop the same flak that Symantec does.

How come that is?

Just get Zone Alarm that's hard core...

Please share who thinks what is the best antivirus?

The reason I don`t like Symantec/Norton is due to the amount of problems their crap software causes.

You only have to look through these forums to see what I mean.

Regards Howard

You just notice the anti-Symantecism, because Norton products are so widespread. I dislike McAee just like I dislike Norton, but there are less people being silly enough to use McAfee (probably because their computer came with Norton preinstalled) and I have no reason to express my dislike..

Oh. And Symantec is the worst. Mainly because they are the biggest and they actually have the means to be bad. They won't go bankrupt no matter how bad products they release and they have the money to acquire and kill any competition and they have the money to push their inferior products to OEMs and users.

You've only got to look at the difference between symantecs corporate and home versions of Norton to see how unscrupulous the company is.

The corporate version is ok, but arguable far from the best, but somehow the home version is a complete pile of proverbial crap. (and yes, it pretty much is the worst of the crap for a large variety of reasons).

Basically, instead of creating a decent product that sells on its own merits, the do as little as they can get away with, perhaps even deliberately making crap for home users to ensure that they have a market. Instead of creating a decent product that sells on it's own merits, they seel a pile of crud with a brand name attached to those gullible, naive, or otherwise unknowing enough to buy it.

Norton for co. is really good, but puke: for home users.

MacAfee firewall acts like it blocking everything even when I scan using its AV I don't find a thing, but when I using other AV I always find something
Don’t get me wrong I do understand that there is no product out there that can completely be aware of all virus, spyware etc but I thing that if little co. can detect the spyware or virus then there is no excerption for MacAfee, Norton

ooh and what do i thing is the best firewall Zonelabs that i paid for
everybody keep saying it's free ... post the actual link not the co. website

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...=dbtopnav_zass

Hope that helps.

Regards Howard

I have been hired by friends and family to fix their PCs only to find the PC is fine but their Norton or McAfee or the like has mucked up the whole thing.

Here it is from an long time IT manager, just get the basic anti virus from McAfee or E-Trust or some one. But do not install any thing but the anti virus. That is the hard part to do these days.

Here's why I hate "only certain companies":1. only certain companies add MB after MB of unusable, if not useless, data to my system. 2. only certain companies make claims to be able to "do it all", then fail miserably. 3. Only certain companies take weeks to address client issues, then blame the problem(s) on the client, or his/her system, or "improper use." 4. Only certain companies install scores of files that cannot be uninstalled without special tools only available (maybe) from the provider's website.

I could go on, but I have to find some uninstall tools by Norton.

I agree on the fact that norton is not a great AV, but i have had worse...
Till now i have been using zonelabs which seems to be working fine, exept that their are two viruses that it detects, howerver can't remove...it tells me that i should not give up hope as they are constantly finding new ways of safley removing viruses.

with norton (and other widespread av/firewall programs), you'd constantly find snippets and snippets of various trojan/virus/malware/spyware/worm/adware taht can disable it or cripple your system.. as viruswriters tend to go for widespread programs first eg ms word/ie/etc as they know that it will spread faster and on more systems as a garentee.. plus knowing how much bugs there is with norton it is possibly quite simple to do i guess.. and the live update is hell for dailup users who can be disconnected at any time and start from scratch for the 15e^infinitieht time

oh yeh.. one more thing to add: norton installer- one of every five installs i did screws up my system to a point of a clean format-break the cd in half (or refund it)-and install avg on it. done. not one cent paid.. ok, maybe the internet bill to download.. but still good.

In a lot of cases. simply turning off system restore, and rescanning will allow an antivirus programme to remove viruses. No antivirus programme can delete files in the system restore folder. So it just keeps on regenerating.

Regards Howard

That's the best info yet. Stick to the basics and leave the rest alone. They're simply bloatware. I've done pretty much the same as Athena with the same results. Can't beat consistency.

I had Avast on one of my PCs, it said it did some update and needed to restart windows (most of the time it doesn't need to do that). I reboot, and it won't boot up windows. I changed the drive to my PromiseATA controller and it starts to boot windows then freezes. I'm sure I can get it to work again, but I'm blaming the problem on Avast since I don't do anything with that PC except record tv with SageTV, I shouldn't have even put an AV on it. But Avast won't be going on any of my or my parents PCs in the future.
This just happened last night, I haven't had a chance to see if I can get windows to boot, no need to troubleshoot this for me here, if I can't figure it out I'll make a thread in WindowsOS about it.

I was waiting for one of the 'guru' types here to report on Avast. seems that maybe it's not as great as a few avid supporters have suggested. A bit of a hit and miss program maybe?

(Hope you don't mind being referred to as a guru SNGX!!)

I used Avast just ONCE 3 or 4 years ago. I put ZA on there as well, the two of them fought it out like cats and dogs and screwed up the PC something awful. By experience with Avast started on a bad note, I haven't used them since. But I don't badmouth them, don't "hate" them.

I hate Symantect because 50% of my work is figuring out how to fix/remove/install their garbage. Their bloatware that takes 15 startups and services to run, with inevitably at least 1 or 2 never working anyway. Their GoBack CRAP that screws up the hard drive boot sector.
The ONLY product I care for from them is their DOS based Ghost program. Which comes in handy sometimes. And occasionally I run WinDoctor directly from the CD to fix registry issues and ActiveX problems. Other then that, stay away!

I like AVG and also use it when retail AVs don't work. But I don't think it's as good as some like to think arount here, I just don't think it's very powerful and finds as much. And I've had a lot of issues with their update system.

I currently use Panda products, and Kaspersky Beta. I am happy with both (when they work). But Panda's issues have been increasing. I think Panda is very strong in detection and removal, but not very smooth in the registration, renewal, installing, department. Plus you get no phone tech support.

So I think my AV of choice right now is Kaspersky. It takes far less resources then Panda and far far less then Symantec.

Check out this thread about AVs:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic37621.html

Yea i had AVG for a while, ddid regular updates, but then i got a virus which was called oo.exe or something like that, which has something to do with LimeWire too, anyway it suched up 9 gb of disc space with porn files, and i ain't the type of guy who doesn't know where his porn is... anyways i put bull guard on it which detected it and managed to remove it, with the help of some other cleaners. AVG manages what it sees, but that isn't verry much.

Noticed I just ranted on the sad software from the a former anti-virus companies that now make 'we can run you whole PC so you can just go watch TV cause you PC is never going to work again' software packages.

As for why we only hate certain companies, I have out grown that and now just hate all companies!! :angel:

Seriously I think people mostly hate a given company because some one they know hates them, the news hates them, the company they hate has more money that the person hating them or the are just a hateful person and the company name came up.

Rarely have I ever heard of a person hating a company because the company actually wronged them in any way.

Wrong! Norton screwed me on my first system, and caused me more down time than any other item, and, as I was lass than a noob at the time, that was a lot. Panda AV treated me well for 3 mos. or so, then screwed me almost weekly for a year. Plus screwing me out of $34.95 in the process. Tiger Direct screwed me out of $22.00 TWICE on RMA's, and I had to threaten them before they would even LISTEN to my complaint.

I could list others, but those are a few, to show you that I do not "hate" without reason. :angel: