...it makes people's PCs run really slowly for no reason, and is a pig to remove.

Seems everyone I know with Symantec software is using the pirated version...

Installing legit Symantec software tends to break your computer as well.

It's easier to remove than you think.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

Download the tool and run it. Voila! Computer is Symantec free. I use it all the time... saves all that registry cropping and folder finding etc. Safe as houses too.

For many families, Norton is an ideal tool. Most people don't really care that their computer is slower than an episode of Family Affairs- as long as it get them to the Thomas Cook site to book a 14 day nightmare excursion with the kids and strife, they're usually pretty happy.

... Bleating on about how counterfeit software might break their computers.

I removed Symantec Norton AV 2006 from my PC last night and was unable to do anything Internet-related until after a reboot. Turns out it was one of their drivers. Why their AV drivers have to play with my connection is beyond me, but guess what... it's one of their competitors on my system now that actually runs ok.

People who don't buy Symantec's products don't have to worry about counterfeits.

And every Symantec product I've ever tried has been a low-performing resource hog that was far inferior to free competing products - so not buying Symantec is just a good idea anyway.

Installing one piece made my key apps on my computer unusable. Uninstalling another had that effect on the entire computer. Unfortunately, I bought both at a major retailer. Hmm...

That makes it very hard to take these warnings at all seriously.

The quick: The Norton branding needs to go away. The product subsists on it's popularity (people know about it).

Most people in IT know that Symantec Corporate/Enterprise antivirus engine is a different animal than the consumer-based Norton retail products.

While it is entirely too easy point and laugh at what has become of the Norton product line, people should consider taking a look at what has been published on the VB100 awards over at www.virusbtn.com.

The latest test does not even list the "Norton" branding as a contender, although Symantec is listed, and ranks high.

As a consultant, I try to recommend proper antivirus/antispyware solutions to clients. At this time, I currently recommend SAVCE 10.1 (10.1.5.5000) Enterprise edition to business clients. It works well and I very easy to centrally manage via a console. GPO deployment is nice to have too. I am often asked about buying the end-user desktop version instead. -I try to shoot that down as a possibility imediately.

The Norton product is designed for "ease of use" and to be cosmetically easy to look at. The ease of use portion works right up until you try to walk a non-technical user through opening up the bundled firewall to allow traffic on service port 3389 (RDP/Terminal Services) so they (usually business managers/owners) can connect from home to the office over VPN. The VPN will work, connecting to the workstation will not, and the owner does not know why.

It (Norton) has been a resource hog an every single computer I have seen, up to and including custom built systems running a QX6700 and 2GB DDR2 performance memory, and a negligible commit charge for monitoring processes.

What I have been doing is trying to redirect users to either Trend-Micro, Kaspersky, or Webroot (Webroot runs a desktop version of Sophos).

for the poster above:

the latest version of savce 10.1 is not 10.1.5.5000, that one has some known bugs

it is currently 10.1.6.6000

latest version number can always be viewed at:

http://entkb.symantec.com/security/output/n2006050314483048.html

or

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/ppfdocs/2006050314483048

even 5000 is not the latest in the 10.1.5 series, there also are some patches published: 10.1.5.5001, and another one 10.1.5.5010

symantec really need to think about redesigning their systems anyway

it says a minimum of 256mb of ram, but if you put it on a system that low specced it will crawl.

i work for a major ISP, and one of our biggest issues we get from customers is norton. they install it, and reboot the machine, and immediately the firewall will lock out most things. as we all know a depressing amount of people can't find their arse with both hands, a map, and a big glowing arrow pointing at it when it comes to computers, and the norton menus are badly thought out, recursive, and way too convoluted for a normal home user to work with.

I work at a helpdesk, and every one of our machines /must/ have AV. Even the Macs. Symantec admits never having found an OS X virus at all, but they still scan everything, with huge impacts on performance. The latest version has no configuration, and no way to disable auto-protect, and that is the only version that works with OS X 10.4. It will scan every single volume when mounted, it will scan a user's home directory every time they log in, and it will stop everything on the computer when it has found a (Windows) virus, until you click the "ok" button.

When it scans a mounted drive, it is normally slow enough that you can actually open the thing and start running programs before the scan starts. Then it doesn't respond to cancel for a while because it isn't threaded nicely. In addition to that, it'll scan its own installer, which I just find comical.

The home directory scan is just way too much burden for login time, when loads of other programs are already trying to auto start. And there are no OS X viruses.

Lots uf our users (used to) use Eudora, which will save every attachment to a directory on recipt of the message. If the virus scanner tried to quarantine the file while Eudora was open, everything on the whole computer would die. I've had to go into single user mode to fix that.

Plus when a user with a Eudora attachments folder is migrated, thye may have loads of Windows viruses laying around from before we had an MTA level virus scanner running. The file copy will pause each and every time it finds a virus (not like the Windows versions, which will just keep adding new discoveries to a list) until you hit the "OK" button. It doesn't want you to make a decision, it just wants to alert you about something. Good thing it waits for user input to keep going

On one migration I got bored halfway through so I started keeping a tally. I recorded well over 200 Windows viruses, which is probably less than 2/3 of the total number. I had to click the button 300 times, so I was required to sit at the computer for the duration of the file copy, instead of going off to do something useful.

We have quite a few of the original Core Solo Mac Minis (512MB of ram too!) which are slow enough by themselves. With auto protect running in the background it can take up to 2 minutes to open a small PDF while the computer isn't doing anything else. Thats just short of insane.

Also I used to run the Coporate / Enterprise Windows versions, but when I saw that it scanned my Winamp settings file every time Winamp accessed it (many times per second) I decided that it needed to go. Especially since it kept turning auto protect on mysteriously after I disabled it.

- Nexox