Norton 360 Version 2.0 Antivirus

[Pussy]

Hey folks. Our home puter is due for it's annual subscription of it's antivirus programme. I've used Norton in the past, and about three years ago went to Panda because Norton seemed to slow everything down/take up lots of room. Panda just seems to be a bit of a pain too.
I'm not at all puter savvy, so I was wondering if some of you computer guns could give me the low down on the 2009 version of Norton, both for and against. I don't want to shell out 129 hard earned slides if Norton isn't going to do the trick.
Thanks in advance for your advice

[CB ARGH]

I have always known Norton as a laggy program. Have you tried the newest version of AVG?

[spookytooth]

http://anti-virus-solution.com/avast2/indexicc.asp
its free for home users and bloody good

[James Deuce]

Avast. Small resource footprint and very regular signature, database, and engine updates.
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

[Coyote]

Just don't go for Norton. They're bastards.

We updated ours a few years back over the internet. In the very fine print that no one reads and just agrees too, they added in that by accepting the agreement, you're allowing them to hold onto your account details and automatically take money out of your account for a new subscription when your previous one runs out. We found this out last year when $130 was suddenly missing.

After several weeks of emails back and forth with Symantec, we were lucky enough to cancel the subscription and stop them from taking anymore money. They made doing this as hard as possible.

Plus their software is a memory hog. And you can get everything on the net for free anyway since computer whizzez take pride in making their own stuff to beat dickhead corporations like Symantec.

[Pussy]

Forgot to add... our home puter is on dial up, too, so the solution I'm looking for will ideally be dial up friendly.
Appreciate the advice so far!

[Spuds1234]

Give Avira Antvir a shot.

Like AVG its free, but its a hell of a lot better, and hasnt gotten bloated like the latest AVG.

[Usarka]

Took Norton off the old mans computer and it sped up heaps. It needs some work to uninstall fully though it's an insidious little shit.

[fliplid]

all of the "big name" software-over-the-counter-in-a-box-providers seem to make life difficult, especially when you want to get rid of their software! presumably they assume that if you go that route, you aint going to know wtf your doing?

[Cajun]

pussy stay the hell away from norton, was good 10 years ago but it got really shocking about 2002ish, laggy, resouces hungry

plenty of free good ones around, avg, avast etc etc.

Download on of those save your money for something more important.

[Spuds1234]

I came accross a little program today called Sandboxie.

It allows me to use any browser (any program infact) in a sandbox so that it (any program being run) cannot see or change anything on my computer, when I exit the browser all the contents of the sandbox are automatically deleted.

So if the need arrises I can surf as many dodgy sites as I want and at the end of the day I just close my browser and Im all set, back exactly where I was before.

Nothing is changed, nothing is broken.

Here is the link: http://www.sandboxie.com/

[Pussy]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, folks!
I picked up a brochure for Norton 2009 yesterday, and in it they're making all sorts of claims about being you-beaut now compared to last year even.
You folks know better than me as far as puters go, so I'll take your advice and look elsewhere.
Ta!

[blairh]

Howdy. I use a program called NOD32, can't recommend it more. It doesn't lag your computer, updates itself in the background and hasn't let a single bug through in the time I've been using it.

Delphinus who frequents this site has an IT business and sells it, I'm sure he can hook you up if you give him a PM =)