Is Norton Anti-virus worth it?

My annual subscription to Norton Antivirus just expired. I think the annual rate is $15. Are the free AV programs just as good? I am running a firewall in the router and the Windows XP firewall. All of my email is virus scanned by a professional organization that offers mail forwarding and virus scanning. I run spy ware scans with both Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D regularly. I do not remember the last tie Norton ever found anything.

Any recommendations on other AV programs?

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/71/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

I've been using this freebie for almost 5 years now and it is most excellent.

Cletus

just as good as norton THEY are better! And Free. I think this is also a very good Anti-Virus http://www.free-av.de/

I didn't re-up with Norton since I installed AVG.

I see they have a 30 day trial version available.

Norton is a waste of money and a resource hog to boot. Both AVG and Anti-Vir are excellent products although the last time I checked AVG looked more professional. That's not a slight toward Anti-Vir though.

With a hardware firewall, AVG (or Anti-Vir), and (though I hate to admit it) Microsoft AntiSpyware you should be just fine. Firefox too, of course. :-)

But I'll go a bit further. Norton is garbage.

I recently worked on system that was infected by 11 distinct viruses. Norton had been installed on this system since the person who owned it had purchased it, and it never caught them. One virus was so nasty, I had to engage in some irritating and time consuming trickery to get rid of it. Once that was done, I installed AVG and got rid of the rest within 15 minutes.

Don't waste your money.

updated?

I did this fix in February, and the latest definitions file was from November 2004. However, a couple of the viruses, which were actually trojans, were really old and should have been part of any definition file from the last year, even allowing for "mutations."

After I got rid of the one that was preventing the system from booting properly, the first thing I did was install AVG. Even without an update, it picked up all but one of the remaining infections, some of them without a system scan because AVG detects certain things when they run or are accessed. The definitions file for the version of AVG I used was about 6 months old.

On the subject of updates, this is another reason I like AVG and recommend it especially to people who don't set aside time to do things like update their definitions. By default, it tells you when it is out of date and will try to download the most recent update at boot.

so far so good. Like yourself my Norton is about to expire and they make it such a pain in the ass to renew that I said screw 'em.

I have been happy with AVG so far.

Nobody else compares.

Firewall and antivirus, I would recommend nothing else.

It's also far better on system resource usage than Norton or the others.

Norton is a good #2, thanks to its kid-protection net-nanny stuff so I'd say use it if you've got curious childrens...

Both are great and free. I used Anti-vir for some time and then went to upgrade and must have hit AVG instead. No matter, it works just as well. I know people who used Norton for their office and had virus problems.

AVG updates a couple times a week.

AVG is very good, even better for the fact that it's free! Norton has been slipping as of late, I don't know what their deal is, but they miss a lot of viruses for some reason. When you do install AVG remember to update and then run a scan in Safe mode, you'll catch a lot more viri and you'll be able to fix all of them.
Sometimes a virus attaches itself to a file that is running in Windows in regular mode and it can't be cleaned, but if you are in safe mode and that file isn't be used the virus can be cleaned.

I look at the AVG website and it looks like you can download a 30 day trial version but have to pay after that. Am I missing something?

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/40/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

The paid versions offer additional support and are needed if you have a network with multiple machines, but if you are just running a single home computer for non-commercial purposes the free version is the option to choose.

I like what I see so far. I did not find any viruses on the frost scan. I am glad I did not renew Norton again now.

I ran AVG in the normal Windows mode and did not find anything. I am not surprised since I have always kept Norton updated, run firewall software, and have all my email virus scanned before it even hits the server.

I will try the safe mode scan and see how it goes.

and I've been really happy.

First time I ran a complete scan, it picked up 7 Trojan Horse
Viruses that Norton had missed.

I suspect their program code is out in the wild, because just about every new virus that comes along has the ability to compromise and even shut Norton down.

As a computer repair person, I have to go with what I see as best for my clients. I've switched exclusively to McAfee. Their program has continued to advance, and it has a spyware and trojan database built in that is pretty impressively up to date- this is something completely neglected by Norton.

And the McAfee (Network Associates) Internet Security program has an impressive firewall.

I haven't played with this in awhile, but my company is now offering this, so I'm supposed to suggest it to people whether I want to do so or not. So, I suppose I should learn more about it.

Anyway, the last time I did play with it, McAfee wouldn't stealth all the ports properly, or at least I found no way of doing it in the time I took searching. Will its current incarnation actually stealth ports? If so, do you know what it does with port 113 (IDENT)?

how stealthy they are online (Firewalls) and do a little research here are some great sites.
http://grc.com/default.htm
https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
http://lists.gpick.com/pages/Security_Testing.htm

Personal Firewall Scoreboard
http://www.grc.com/lt/scoreboard.htm

I use grc.com a lot, particularly Shields Up. I probably never would have got my Linux firewall working properly without using it for testing.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to tell me specifically how McAfee deals with port 113 stealthing. (Leakage is different.) ShieldsUp suggest ZoneAlarm does it the way I want it done and that this is the only Windoze app tested that does it that way, but McAfee may have progressed since they wrote that.

I now use 98se and refuse to (upgrade) to any other windows platform. What in your opinion would be the a good Linux application to move to because thats the ONLY way I'm going to go. I won't even consider Apple.

I don't want to lead you astray, so let me say up front I am still mostly a Linux newbie. I used Unix years ago, so it wasn't a complete shock to my system, but at that time Linux/GNU was still in its infancy, and a graphical interface was just bizarre for me to contemplate.

But, from that perspective, I might offer a couple words of advice.

As you're no doubt aware, there are many different distributions. All have their strengths, some their weaknesses. Some are better for beginners, others better for seasoned sysadmins. It felt like a jungle to me when I was making my choice. When it boiled right down to it, I settled on SuSE 9.2.

The reason for that is fairly straightforward. I could go to the bookstore and buy books specifically for SuSE. That may not be the best recommendation in the world, but, for me, I process information better through reading. I have collections of references for dozens of things. Community support, which all the major distros have in ample supply, is great, but there's nothing quite like having a handy reference work sitting right there. Also, using a professionally written reference avoids the "fanboy" syndrome and accidentally ending up in the middle of an argument between two old pros about how things "should" be done.

So far, SuSE has worked very well for me, aside from some issues with my graphics card that I've mentioned in other threads and that would be present no matter which distro I used. It's a Linux/Driver/ATI thing. What I know how to do with the command line, I can do. What I absolutely do not know how to do and have been unable to figure out quickly, SuSE, somewhere, has a graphical interface for it. It's a bit daunting, and the learning curve for a newbie is extremely high, but it works and is secure as all get-out.

I also tried Mandrake, Slackware, Fedora Core 3, and Knoppix. (Another great thing about Linux is you can install it then delete it all and not worry about the crap involved while installing Windoze, particularly XP.) All were fine, although I had a few problems with Fedora and the install. It didn't like my 4 extra USB ports, and I had to guess a bit during the install process to get them to work. I did it, but if I hadn't had some idea what was happening, I probably would have gone on to something else right then. I chose SuSE over Mandrake and Slackware because, as I said, I could buy books.

Something to consider: SuSE has a LiveCD version you can download and burn to a CD as a boot disk. You can then fire up your system using only the CD and test it out a bit. (This is what Knoppix is good for as well. I only tried the LiveCD version of it.) It'll recognize your Windoze drives and pretty much let you browse the system and see how it works, making sure all your hardware works reasonably well. If your Windoze drives are formatted in NTFS, you don't want to write anything to them because it could destroy all the data on your drive, but other than that, it's a great way to test things.

Other distros have this as well, but I'm not sure which ones.

Here's a link to a great resource:

http://www.linuxiso.org/

It has ISO images of all the major distros, including the LiveCD version for those that have it. They are huge, so we're talking about some serious download time, but worth it if you're looking to convert at any point.

BTW, what I've done for the moment is install an extra hard drive. One has Linux on it, and the other has Windoze. You can partition your existing drive so it has both, but I'm paranoid, and this let me not worry about such things as accidentally killing my Windoze stuff. (I do NOT want to go through another WindozeXP install. I'd rather run naked through the Alaskan tundra in February.)

One final word of advice: When you have a weekend free and want to give it a whirl, read all instructions carefully, look around some support forums for install advice, and plan what you're going to do. It may seem tedious while doing it, but it will save you tons of time later.

I installed it on two computers. On one I had been using Norton Utilities. AVG immediately found several viruses that Norton had missed. I had been using the update feature with Norton regularly.

I've used a lot of pay and free programs and like avast the best. It has the best combination of features. It protects everything, email, web, and so on. http://www.avast.com/

Anti-Vir is nice for scanning, but the updates are large and the program doesn't have email protection.

I've never used AVG but I read that the other two free ones are better.

If you want a good pay one, Kaspersky and Trend-Micro are excellent.

Don't ever use Norton or McAfee, they are resource hogs and not very good at detecting stuff. Norton has major hardware issues too. And McAfee will take over your CPU periodically.

Instead of renewing my subscription in March, I got AVG on the
advice of people in this forum, and I'm delighted with it. Does
a much better job. I've got the free version, and it's all I need.