Norton licence is about to expire in a few days, and I've just downloaded a
30-day trial of AVG professional. It's isolated 2 Trojans that Norton
couldn't shift. Required a reboot, nonetheless, but I don't mind.

Has anyone got any definitive views on which product is better? I may plump
for AVG free after the 30 days. Is this a wise move? I know the 2 year
licence is only approx £20, but if I can get away with having the free
version, I will.

Cheers,

Simon

Simon Ough wrote:
I switched from Norton to AVG a year ago (full version) and haven't
looked back one iota. Its much faster at processing income mail and
just less intrusive apart from the update e-mails which can arrive
several times a day. Still I'd rather that than the Norton approach of
consolidating them all up into one update while leaving you vulnerable.

Don't be tempted by the offer of the package with Kerio Firewall though.
I did that and its a pretty crap product IMO and will be in the bin
when its year's up.

Tony

Tony Raven wrote:
Have a look at Avast!,a superb free product IMOH.Install it and forget it,it
even scans messages off the server in Mailwasher and Newsgroup messages.


Sam Salt

Hi
Had some problems with Norton on Dial Up and all they said was "buy 2005" -
strewth I'd only bought 2004 2 months earlier - and they weren't offering
any discounts.
Assumed support had changed hands and they wouldn't / couldn't support 2004.
SO ...... mine's due for renewal in a couple of months and I'm watching
carefully, but sure as hell it isn't going to be NIS.
With interest & good luck to you
Norm

Well personally I never liked AVG - my first impression was that it felt
very Fisher Price like: "My First Antivirus". The update facility is one
thing that could do with sorting out.
The default configuration is something like "Attempt update every day at
3am, if I'm not on then bugger it. I'll only force a check if I haven't
been on at 3am for two weeks". I haven't come across the email updates
you mention though all I know is that we've had to clean several PCs
riddled with crap that AVG didn't pick up.

My preference is Avast! (http://www.avast.com). I don't like the skin you
are stuck with if you don't register the program but overall it is very
light on resources - updates quickly and frequently (I think I've had
four or five updates this weekend alone) and hasn't let a single thing
past on anything we use it on.
We had an old PC that took 3 hours to scan with Norton - Avast! had it
scanned and cleaned inside of 15 minutes without missing anything.

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 21:41:50 +0100, "Simon Ough"
<simon@NOSPAMmedia247.co.uk> wrote:

From all the comments I have seen, in a comparison between Norton and
just about ANY other product, Norton is doing well when it even
manages second best :-)

Seriously, AVG has a MUCH better reputation. Personally, I think
Avast! is even better (and is also free for personal use).

"Simon Ough" <simon@NOSPAMmedia247.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4262ca16$0$94518$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...
Fwiw, I've had AVG Free for a couple of years with no operational or virus
problems. The auto-update feature works well if you set it for a time when
you are normally likely to be online, and you can update manually any time
if you think you may have missed something. I also have Spybot installed.
Trevor Morris

"Simon Ough" <simon@NOSPAMmedia247.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4262ca16$0$94518$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...

Of the clients we support with AVG and with Norton, those with AVG have
*far* less problems.

"cw" <usenet@fidei.DEADco.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns963BE57471A0Ecwfidei@212.159.2.87...
No longer true with AVG 7.

Norton used to be ok - now its simply a "big name" that makes sales based
on that alone IMO - I think they lost the plot about 1999-2000...

I`ve also seen a fully up to date Nortons Internet Security ignore an
active variant of agobot, and miss another dormant virus on the drive in
the last couple of weeks. Sysclean (a one-shot get me out of trouble
virus killer from Trend) spotted and cleared the active one in seconds,
and made mincemeat out of the dormant one during a full scan.

Oh, and bypass McAfee too...

--
Please add "[newsgroup]" in the subject of any personal replies via email
--- My new email address has "ngspamtrap" & @btinternet.com in it ;-) ---

Colin Wilson wrote:
The funniest bit about Norton is a couple of times I've submitted a
suspect new virus to them. In doing so it scanned the file, said there
was no virus and refused to let me submit it. A few days later they
released a database update and guess what - the files now had a virus!

Tony

cw wrote:

OTOH, I hate all the current virus checkers I've used - particularly
Avast. It's far too intrusive for someone who never actually gets any
virii (I just feel the need to have a little protection, just in case).
Pretty much everything seems slower with Avast installed. Web pages, even
printing - they all seem oddly slower and then I see that bloody icon
spinning in the corner... I've gotten into the habit of switching it off
first thing after boot-up. If a new drive I've ordered turns up, I'll re-
installing my system later and it'll be back to AVG7.

Not that AVG7 is exactly perfect. I loved AVG6 - it did exactly what *I*
wanted and was easy to remove for the odd spot of online gaming. The
current versions of both Avast & AVG insist on running 2 or 3 background
tasks, that have to be removed manually. Complete PITA.


higgy.

"Tony Raven" <junk@raven-family.com> wrote in message
news:LqqdnTBDY4ampf7fRVnytQ@pipex.net...

Although not free, Kaspersky AV is best!

Well I have to say I've found exactly te opposie. Maybe there are some
circumstances where things perform differently but I don't see much
difference in performance with Avast! on or off.
I don't understand the intrusive comment either, there's two icons in the
crner which you can merge in to one easily enough. The one thing that can
annoy me is when the update kicks in during a game of soldat - kills the
framerate but any app would do that.

--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

cw wrote:

There's also that little blue box that keeps sliding up and can't be told
to "sod off". ;-)

That's the real issue for me. It's even worse if you're recording video
to an external device (i.e. a VCR) and forget to kill the update task.
AVG6 didn't do *anything* after "exiting" the tray icon. It was very
simple to switch off completely - unfortunately that's not true of AVG7
or Avast.


higgy.

Thanks everyone for your help! I'll be sticking with AVG methinks. I only
have to decide upon free or professional........

Hmmm..

Anyways, I have another question....

If I uninstall Norton AV now, will it mean Norton Utilities stops working as
well? Does that need a valid sub to work? I just use it to remove errors
from unused DLL's...... or does anyone know of a free equivalent?

Thanks again guys!

Simon

On 18 Apr 2005 17:45:28 GMT, higgy <higgyslacker@hotmail.com> wrote:

It just goes away after a few seconds.

More annoying is the red box you get if you have no connection when it
wants to update. That one you have to click on before it disappears,
AND then click a button on the dialog box it throws up.


I don't play online games, but I have never found it noticeably
interfering with anything else I do (and I do use my PC pretty
heavily, since I work as an Oracle Software developer, and do quite a
lot at home).

Alex Heney wrote:
You can fix that in the set-up menu. Un tick the 'This computer is
permanently connected to the Internet' box. (I can't remember where
exactly this is, I'm not at home using my machine currently)

I'm very happy with Avast too, (but I'm also not a Gamer)

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply

Simon Ough wrote:

You can uninstall Norton AV, but retain Utilities, there's an option
somewhere in the Norton program to do this. The latter doesn't seem to
require a sub.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply

On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:48:56 +0100, Mark Carver
<mark.carver@invalid.invalid> wrote:

But it is, so far as Avast! is concerned.

That box works very well when you use dial up. But once onto BB, using
a router, Avast has no way to tell when I connect, so I need it to do
its automatic updates as soon as I boot up.


It is the laptop, when I'm using it away from home, or using VPN to my
client site that usually gets that error.

--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
Hm..what's this red button fo:=/07<NO CARRIER

To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom