Norton - What other options ?

I've been using the free version of "Anti-Vir" the last few years and it works great. It only takes up a small memory footprint compared to Nortons.


http://www.free-av.com/


If you're using XP, it has built in fire-wall feature already. However the XP firewall, though ok, in addition I also use the free version of "Sygate Personal Firewall":

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3356.html


A good program for scanning-for and removing Spyware I recommend is Ad-Aware SE Personal (again it's freeware):

http://www.lavasoft.de/products/ad-aware_se_personal.php


For additional protection against spyware, I also recommend "Spyware Blaster" (also free):

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html


SpywareGuard is also another good (and free) product you can download from there:

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html


Best regards!

Zone Alarm and Ad-Aware. I am always baffled why people use Norton. A couple of years ago, I had a new PC running RAID configured drives. It died as Norton was put in. After a lot of waiting on please hold music, Norton finally told me that the software at the time could cause any PC which has a RAID controller in to stop functioning. I couldn't reintall from scratch coz the thing refused to be turned on. Got my money back from them but they said they have no plans to fix the system as RAID controllers would not be that common! I had used RAID drives for some years and I could not agree with them. Any case customer service was awful. I only got compensation when I refused to accept giving in. I bought a PC with hardware config that was high spec but not uncommon and I was told the software wouldn't work with it. I was then told that the only thing published on their problems can be found on some discussion forum.

I used norton av for years and then had a virus slip through. I could not get rid of it with norton (the virus masked itself from norton) and tried AVG, which nailed the problem. When my norton subscription expired I tried renewing but had such problems with their website I got fed up and dropped it. Have been using AVG and Adaware for several years now and have been quite happy.

I'm trying avast! now... seems good