Norton's Flaw

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11200B60O4GG

Not only that, but it is a system resource hog and is the source of tons of computer problems. I cannot tell you how many times I am trying to help somebody solve a computer problem and then they tell me they have Norton. I tell them to uninstall that garbage, and poof, the problem is gone.

I agree. Symantec needs to create a security suite that is low on system resources for once.

I find it more convenient to get my laptop infested with viruses and to perform a reformat every now and again instead of running Norton AntiVirus. What a resource hogging pile of crap.

I used to stand by Symantec a bunch. To be sure, Norton SystemWorks 2003 saved my computer at a LAN party one night in the faces of all of my friends who utterly loathed Symantec and anything that even smelled of the name \"Norton.\"

That said, it's 2006, and SystemWorks has, if possible, become worse on system resources. I don't stand by Symantec as much as I used to -- the only product they make that actually defends your computer is the Symantec Client Antivirus and Symantec Client Firewall which costs a pretty penny, and then isn't any lighter on system resources. Norton is joining McAfee, and between their abysmal product, their cancellation of Sygate, and their use of rootkit technology drives me, as an informed consumer, to abandon their product.

Personal experience comes from two nights ago. I was working on the Dell Dimension XPS D300. It has a 300 MHz Pentium II, 384 MB PC133 SDRAM, an 8 GB hard drive, and some peculiar graphics card. Not surprisingly, an 8 GB hard drive running Windows XP isn't too hard to fill up -- fill up to the point that one can no longer defrag. My dad asked me to fix it on one of the weekends I was back home from college.

I bought a Geforce 4 MX 440 for $10.00, got a 20 GB hard drive from a friend, and put a blue LED fan on the back of it. Once I formatted the 20 GB and got it all up and running, I was nothing short of appalled how fast it was running. Smoothly. Perfectly.

But of course.

No Norton SystemWorks. Only AVG, Spybot and ZoneAlarm. It appalls me just how much SystemWorks requires.

It's too bad. Norton used to be really good with their anti-virus, but recently they've not done so well.