McAfee vs Norton antivirus

[Guest db99wj]

McAfee is free with Comcast. I am having to switch over, I was with time warner road runner, but comcast bought them.

Norton came with my computer that I bought in December, the trial is over in about 20 days. I will then need to pay $59 bucks or something like that. Which I would rather not pay.

They are both suites with the antivirus, antispam, firewall and pop up or something.

Thoughts or suggestions, ideas.

[jgrauman]

just run the mcafee, it's free and does the same thing. i'll warn you though, my buddy runs mcafee through comcast and hates it, has to do a bunch of sign-ins all the time, but that's just one person, i have no idea beyond that. i switched to mac's about a year ago and haven't looked back!

[Guest db99wj]

just run the mcafee, it's free and does the same thing. i'll warn you though, my buddy runs mcafee through comcast and hates it, has to do a bunch of sign-ins all the time, but that's just one person, i have no idea beyond that. i switched to mac's about a year ago and haven't looked back!

You Mac nerd! Just kidding, my bro in law did the same thing, he is in IT and has always worked with PC's, he owns a Mac.

Have you seen the new Vista PC vs Mac commercial? Where PC with new Vista that gets asked by the big security dude in the back if he will allow the content of the discussion? Very quick of Mac and that is a great ad campaign.

[Guest Hyaloid]

pccillin is what I use... it is easy to customize, does not slow down your system, and is extremely effective.

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/Windows+Vista+and+Trend+Micro.htm

[Guest Archimedes]

If that's all you have to choose from, go with McAfee.

Norton is terrible anymore.

If you wanted to pay for the best internet security, PC-cilin.

http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/pc-cillin/evaluate/trial.htm

That is a 30-day trial.

From: http://www.trendmicro.com

~Archi

[TGO David]

I'd recommend none of the above. AVG Free Edition is much better.

http://free.grisoft.com/

[Guest GlocKingTN]

Im gonna have to go with Norton. Thats what I use because it came with my new Dell XPS that I bought about 5 or 6 months ago. I havent had the first problem out of it. Thats my .02

[Guest drewi]

I'm with Tungsten. Get the AVG. I recently went to this. It's free, I know a bunch a people that have used it for years without problems.

Norton is horrible on the resource side of things. IMO it uses way too many resources. The version I just got rid of would not let me adjust the settings. I would set it not to scan and not to auto download new definitions but somehow it would override my input. I've heard McCafee is the same way. These programs are always doing something and wasting memory.

On a side note I just ditched IE7 in favor of the newest version of Firefox. The new version of Firefox is faster than the old one, and is much faster than IE. Should be safer security wise too.

These two switches made a noticeable difference in computer speed.

[Guest GlocKingTN]

Actually, I have used all of these, AVG-Norton-McAfee, they all worked fine for me. I just like Norton, well, cause it was free for a year!

[Marswolf]

After years of using Norton, I finally had enough. So I just went through a big search for both a new firewall and antivirus program.

AVG is fine, but I finally settled on !avast. http://www.avast.com/index.html. It sets up easily and updates the virus definitions several times a day. Integrates well with email, etc.

Did I mention it's also free?

BTW, Comodo http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/ ended up as the firewall. It sets up well, has a perfect record on port leaks according to http://www.grc.com. And it is also free. The behavior is much like Norton Firewall without the huge overhead. It's fast.

[RandyC]

Earlier Norton versions seemed to work great. I have it on my Mac at work. But the latest version installed on my Dell at home was just awful. It slowed the operating system down to a mind numbing crawl. I had to dump it.

[Mike]

One more for AVG here.

[Marswolf]

Some reviews like AVG. Some like Avast. I found one that likes Avira.

Generally, Avast and AVG are pretty equal with perhaps a slight edge for Avast. The worst thing I can say about Avast is that it's scanning interface is a bit clunky but not difficult if you read the help that pops up. In normal day to day use, it's invisible unless it alerts you to some problem.

I'd suggest trying both AVG and Avast and see which you like better. That's what I did.

[Guest GlocKingTN]

I also suggest trying one until you can find one that does what you want it to do, then keep it!

[towerclimber37]

drewi, to further help you secure your browser, go to mozilla firefox addons, and look for the addon called noscript

it allows YOU to control which scripts are allowed to run on your browser. You can click on the scripts you want to run in the "options" button, and it'll reload the page with that script running.

I love it!

[Guest GlocKingTN]

drewi, to further help you secure your browser, go to mozilla firefox addons, and look for the addon called noscript

it allows YOU to control which scripts are allowed to run on your browser. You can click on the scripts you want to run in the "options" button, and it'll reload the page with that script running.

I love it!

I also have Firefox installed. Is it better to use than IE? And why?

[Guest drewi]

Towerclimber, thanks for the tip! I'll check it out.

GlocKing,

Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer. At least that's what a lot of IT experts say. I'm not a computer master so I have to take their word for it.

Of course a lot of computer guys say run Mac or Linux etc. I suppose they know what they're talking about. I tried Mac and I can't stand it. I'll have to give Mac another shot and see if the new stuff is easier to use. I still remember the days when you couldn't get any software for Mac. Mac was for the teachers and college students and PC's were for the people that actually wanted to make money with their computers. I guess times may be changing.

[Guest GlocKingTN]

Towerclimber, thanks for the tip! I'll check it out.

GlocKing,

Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer. At least that's what a lot of IT experts say. I'm not a computer master so I have to take their word for it.

Of course a lot of computer guys say run Mac or Linux etc. I suppose they know what they're talking about. I tried Mac and I can't stand it. I'll have to give Mac another shot and see if the new stuff is easier to use. I still remember the days when you couldn't get any software for Mac. Mac was for the teachers and college students and PC's were for the people that actually wanted to make money with their computers. I guess times may be changing.

What do you mean more secure? As in how? Like I said, I have it, but never use it.

[Guest GlocKingTN]

I just switched over to Firefox a second ago. It does look a little different.

[Marswolf]

My wife runs Firefox while I'm still on IE7. Micro$oft did a big IE7 security update within the past week. I can't tell you if it has significant problems. So far, it works for me. Like every MS application, it has constant security upgrades. I don't visit many sites that are likely to cause a problem. If you are into hacker sites all day long, you probably want all the security you can get - and maybe a separate non-LANed computer to browse and download with. I do know Firefox had a security hoax that wasn't real.

I hear there are some sites that do not work well with Firefox. You might want to leave IE on the computer too for a while. My concern is a bunch of BHOs I run. I'll have to fully check out all of them before I switch over. But the list of Firefox add-ons is extensive.

[towerclimber37]

I like Firefox because a. its open source (that means that everyone can make addon modules for it. and its more secure because YOU get to choose what sort of addons go into it.

As far as I know, any browser can be compromised because of the websites you visit.

Amazon.com actually tried a program that used different prices for different people based on what they were willing to pay for a product..all because they found out where people surf on the web, what they pay for online and how much they pay for it.

I've had far fewer spyware problems since I started using it.

oh..and another program that does wonders is Ccleaner

I guess it stands for crap cleaner..but its awesome!

here's the link for it.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

it cleans up all the old crap left behind when you uninstall programs, and gets rid of prefetch data. take a look and see what you think.

[towerclimber37]

Glockking,

Linux is more secure..but I'm not computer savvy enough to do all the programming thats required to run it.

[Guest drewi]

I hear there are some sites that do not work well with Firefox. You might want to leave IE on the computer too for a while. My concern is a bunch of BHOs I run. I'll have to fully check out all of them before I switch over. But the list of Firefox add-ons is extensive.

AFAIK that has to do with website design. Most designers should have a copy of all the major internet browsers and design their site accordingly.

If you get some new guy designing a site he may not know that different browsers sometimes display web pages differently.

Either that or something in the way the Firefox works will not allow it to work with a certain piece of software used to view the web page.

[Guest GlocKingTN]

So far, I like Firefox, expecially the add-ons. I will keep playing with it.

[TGO David]

So far, I like Firefox, expecially the add-ons. I will keep playing with it.

Firefox is just about all I ever use anymore. There are a few things at work that we have to use IE for, but Firefox ix my primary browser.