I wasn't around when this topic was being discussed, so I'll give my input now.
I would not pay for any internet security software for personal use, there are plenty of free (for personal use) apps that run in the background without hogging system resources and complaining all the time , like Norton does,
I've been using the following combination for the past 5 ish years without any problems, all free.
Avg Free, anti virus,
free.avg.com
Spybot Search and destroy, malware/adware/spyware
_www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html
Adaware, malware/adware/spyware
lavasoft.com
Sygate Personal Firewall,
_www.tucows.com/preview/213160
I've found that AvgFree has become slightly more resource hungry since the recent upgrade to version 8.
I perticularly like Spybot and SPF, The former has lots of built in tools that allow you to optimize your system, The startup manager is great for removing apps that run at startup time. You'll probably find things running there that you never knew were loading at startup.
Why some of these apps want to run on your system all of the time is beyond me. Like why would you want Adobe PDF Reader running in the background at all times?
Removing certain versions of Norton from your system also has the nasty side effect of damaging system files, one PC I looked at for someone could not connect to a network at all. Its so common that norton even released a seperate application to remove its software.
service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
That smells a bit like they are making it difficult for users to move away from thier software to something else. |