Norton's the Devil

DGates wrote on 12/11/2007, 4:20 AM

I've always had issues with previous experiences with Norton Anti-Virus. It always seemed more problematic than helpful.

When I got my new HP about a year ago, I never activated the free 60-day trial of Norton until about a month and a half ago, I figured, what the heck, surely it will work better than in the past. Initially, everything was fine and I didn't even think about it.

But over that time since the activation, my computer starting getting a bit quirky here and there. It slowly starting affecting everything from Vegas to DVD Workshop to my mouse scrolling and clicking.

So I figured it was Norton, and uninstalled it. Sure enough, it's like night and day. EVERYTHING works as it's supposed to. No more Anti-Virus software for me. Norton's evil.

Comments

rs170a wrote on 12/11/2007, 4:27 AM

Welcome to the Norton haters club :-)
There are MUCH better anti-virus programs out there.
I'm running Trend Micro's PC-Cillin but there's also AVG free, NOD-32 and a bunch of others that don't hijack your system the way Norton does.

Mike

blink3times wrote on 12/11/2007, 4:28 AM

I've had problems with Norton ANYTHING at some point or another.

Today, I stay far away from ANY box, disk, floppy... etc that has the Name Norton on it.

farss wrote on 12/11/2007, 6:15 AM

I've still got Norton AV running on this PC and never had an issue with it, it simply just works, But the latter versions are indeed dogs and even on office PCs have caused us major grief. Switched everything here to Kapersky apart from this PC and all the office PCs where I work as well. I find it just 'gets out of the way', capturing, editing, doing anything I never know it's there.

Bob.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/11/2007, 6:27 AM

When I worked for Symantec in the late 90's doing Tech support - we were told by our leads that ALL products were released with bugs that were to be resolved via known work arounds or we were to end the call within 10 minutes and steer them to paid support.

The experience has tainted my view of anything that comes out of Symantec. When they purchased Sygate and discontinued the product - I was thoroughly ticked off.

Cliff Etzel
bluprojekt

ken c wrote on 12/11/2007, 7:42 AM

agree re sygate, I liked the firewall..

and right re norton, I tried twice to install norton 360 on my wife's computer - it is a bad program that doesn't work, memory hogging, doesn't install properly; I had to try twice, then do a system restore... never ever ever get norton 360 ...

birdcat wrote on 12/11/2007, 7:45 AM

I replaced Norton with McAfee a couple of months ago and got a huge increase in speed plus better system stability.

It should be renamed Norton Antiproductive....

Laurence wrote on 12/11/2007, 8:51 AM

On a fast system Norton slows things down, but on a slower older system, it is just incredible how slow Norton can be ... I'm talking clicking on a window and seeing the results five minutes later!

DGates wrote on 12/11/2007, 8:58 AM

I'm guessing some of the slowness is due to Norton doing it's job? As when I click on a link, I usually have to click it again before it opens. Is Norton checking this link for viruses before it allows access?

Since the trial period was to end in 6 days, I'd be getting prompts to renew, along with the number if viruses it has stopped. Something like 17,000 in just 50 days.

Yeah. Right.

AtomicGreymon wrote on 12/11/2007, 9:21 AM

I'm using Symantec Antivirus 10.1.5 (which used to be called Corporate Edition in eariler versions), and I've had much better experiences with it than any other Norton product. It doesn't seem to slow my system down at all, and the interface is much simpler, eliminating all that pointless graphical crap that seems to cause Norton to take forever to simply open (even though it's always there in the tray).

Never again would I install any of Norton's commercial software suites, though, or any of their component applications. I can't understand why the company is even still in business after all the crap they've released. They must have some incredibly loyal users, lol.

Coursedesign wrote on 12/11/2007, 10:35 AM

I can't understand why the company is even still in business after all the crap they've released. They must have some incredibly loyal users, lol.

Lol that.

Bundling 90-day trials on nearly every PC sold, and fancy marketing to numb consumers for whom I can only have compassion (why should they have to be computer experts?).

I feel really sorry for Peter Norton who is very active here in Santa Monica. Great techie, and now active in many non-profit organizations, presumably advising them not to buy anything with his name on it...