Why not Norton or McAfee?

[Nabrin]

I noticed a lot of our more savy board members do not recommend using either of the big commercial anti-virus programs.

NOTE If you're currently using Norton (Symantec), or McAfee security tools (antivirus/firewall), I strongly recommend switching to some other product, as soon, as your subscription expires.

Any particular reason on this?

[Train]

They take over your computer and prevent you from doing lots of things.
Slow the computers down.

McAfee has been known to stop installing of programs, unless you disabled it first.
Just as a example.

Add AVG to that list is my recommendation.

PS - Just remembered, believe it, there are nasties that write themselves into both as if they were a natural part of the AV program.

[Broni]

This should be moved to Viruses/Trojans/Spyware

[Train]

This should be moved to Viruses/Trojans/Spyware

Done.

[HAN]

I still recommend not using McAfee. But beginning with Norton 2009, I now heartily recommend Norton AV or Norton IS. They are radically different from their bloated predecessors. They are now 2 of the lightest programs you can run.

[Nabrin]

I actually have access to Norton Corporate through my company. They allow us to install it on the computer at home since we the ability to logon to the email system from the house.

Corporate edition is ONLY a virus scanner and nothing else that comes with some of the 360 programs out there.

I can see why people shy away from the bloating that is on the other programs.

[HAN]

Symantec Corporate is NOT the same as the Norton products. I don't know how much (if any) of the code has been re-written as the Norton product was. My endorsement only goes for the Norton stuff...

[jdc2000]

I agree with HAN on Norton 2009 and Norton 2010. They are excellent products, nothing like the bloated junk of Norton 2008 and previous.

[Robertjr]

Norton was the first AV program that I installed on my first computer, and I have used it on all of my systems. I agree that they seem bloated, and do not always catch every bug, but for the most part I have remained virus free.
I do have a theroy that Norton and or McAffee have two buildings, one building holds the programmers that write the antivirus programs. The other building holds the programmers that write the virus files. That is just my opinion, but think about it

[tdark]

Norton 2009 and 2010 rocks. The earlier versions would bring a computer to a crawl, not these. I 100% support Norton 2009 and 10. Tom