WHY NO ONE SHOULD USE NORTON OR MCAFEE ANTIVIRUS

General Topics
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Hell avast! Community!

Comcast is my ISP (Internet Service Provider) and I posted the following article in the Comcast Security Forum concering the inefficiencies of Norton and McAfee and why no one should use their products. You see as a Comcast member they give their customers a free subscription to McAfee products. After using it I wrote the following article:

"Hello Comcast community,

Let me begin by saying although I am not an “expert” in this particular industry I do have quite a bit of user experience in this area.

In the offline world a big name or major name brand often equals the best quality and efficiency. However in the online world when it comes to software this is often not true. Norton and McAfee are the 800 pound guerillas in the antivirus industry but are they the best choices for virus protection?

Again I’m not an expert but I have used these products and many others and have read many independent online reviews and conclude: Absolutely Not. Besides being the target of virus attacks themselves, these products require huge and let me emphasize, H U G E amounts of system resources. Often slowing down your PC and functionality or slowing your boot up time significantly. This was the case with McAfee for me. It not only slowed my boot up time but required an undue amount of system resources, sometimes slowing video feeds and streaming media.

Also in my experience Norton failed to shield my computer from 5 trojan horses using it’s Norton System Security Suite 2003. To add insult to injury I had to use another vendor to remove the infections as Norton was unable to.

Given the fact that about 500 new viruses are released each month, daily or near daily antivirus updates are necessary. However Norton Antivirus and McAfee Virusscan 9.0 only update once a week (I know McAfee 10.0 corrects this). This can leave you quite exposed to virus infections. Utilizing the New McAfee 10.0 I was recently hit with a very common virus know as “exploit-byte verify”. Although Microsoft has released a patch blocking this exploit, McAfee 10.0 missed this virus and it was only detected in a manual scan.

People I haven’t intended to write a book and I don’t want to bore you so I’ll get right to the point although I could go on and on about the inefficiencies of Norton and McAfee.

There are several better alternatives out there and the one in particular that I use and am thrilled by is avast! Available at www.avast.com. No, I’m neither an employee or affiliate of this product but since the release of the new 4.6 version I have become a big fan of this product. The funny thing about avast! is that previous versions of this product did not impress me too much but with this new and updated version it has become a clear winner in my opinion. Oh and need I mention it is FREE for home use! avast! is complete protection for your computer. This is not some demo version or stripped down version of it’s Professional version like AVG another well known free antivirus product.

avast! is very light on system resources and provides much better real-time detection than both Norton and McAfee. When you go to the avast! website just click on the link in the middle of the page that says desktop solution then scroll to the bottom and click the link that says FREE avast! home addition and you can read all about the superior protection of this product and download it for free. For what it’s worth you can also choose what ever skin or look you want for avast! after you have downloaded it. I for one don’t like the default skin so I changed it to the one of my choice.

If you decide to dump Norton or McAfee and you should!, your probably wondering what you’ll use for firewall protection. Not to worry the best firewalls are also Free! Just go to www.download.com which is a CNet website and you can either download Kerio, Sygate or ZoneAlarm for free."

As you can imagine I was immediately attacked by the misguided and misinformed pro Norton and McAfee crowd! :smiley: But facts are facts. avast! is simply the best antivirus product one can use. And I’ll being putting it on all my friends and family computers real soon. 8)

Much love to the avast! community and a thousand kudos to avast! :-*

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Internetworld7,

Welcome to the Avast forum. Very nice article you posted. I am sure you were attacked by the Nortons and McAfees, :slight_smile:
Yes, Avast is a good product and I am sure you are going to continue to enjoy it. Once again, welcome to the community here.

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Thank you neal63. Glad to be here. Hope to convert many people to avast!.

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Have to agree with you, a good friend of mine runs the full version of Norton, and, almost without fail the burnt CD he’s given me has a virus on it, I tell him every time BUT he won’t change, I dread to think what’s on his home PC.

I was going to put a similar recommendation on the end of my thanks for the help I was given concerning decompression bombs.

Thanks people,
Max.

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My story’s much like yours internetworld7. Dumped NAV after it let me down, found avast! and Kerio and have been happy ever after!

Cool forum here too!

Good to meet you both

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Hey, look at my avatar (made by sZc) It explains everything I want to say here this time! ;D

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I won’t argue with comments about installed versions of Norton or McAfee, I lucked into finding avast first and only afterwards (mostly here) did I hear the nightmare stories about those two “big names”.

But the McAfee engine must be fairly good. That’s what Postini’s VirusGuard uses (and which, in turn, my ISP uses for all incoming mail), and it’s efficient enough that my avast’s email provider has never even really gotten a workout because it’s never gotten to “see” any viruses.

Our version of VG has 3 options for infected messages that are intercepted: delete (nearly always), “fix” and deliver, which usually means deleting attachment(s), or if you’re really adventurous, “deliver as is”. There are times I’ve been tempted to try the last one, just to check out avast, but why play Russian roulette?

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McAfee Virusscan 9.0 only update once a week (I know McAfee 10.0 corrects this)

Actually McAfee 9.0 retrieves updates average once a month, sometimes twice a month. I heard v10 had done alot better but I stop using McAfee cause I’m tired of getting the updates at such a very slow pace and losing alot of RAM.

If you decide to dump Norton or McAfee and you should!, your probably wondering what you'll use for firewall protection. Not to worry the best firewalls are also Free! Just go to www.download.com which is a CNet website and you can either download Kerio, Sygate or ZoneAlarm for free."

I suggest for newcomers to use ZoneAlarm cause the rest can be a bit hard to configure. Kerio and Sygate are still pretty great but I found that some people had a hard time dealing with the program settings.

But the McAfee engine must be fairly good. That's what Posting's VirusGuard uses (and which, in turn, my ISP uses for all incoming mail), and it's efficient enough that my avast's email provider has never even really gotten a workout because it's never gotten to "see" any viruses.

The scan engine is pretty good at scanning. Virus Guard will scan any incoming, downloaded, and running files or programs in your hard drive and will automactically try to disinfect the infected file (for most users, it’s the default setting), if cannot be disinfected they’ll give you options to quarantine the infected file, delete it or ignore it (if you’re brave). :slight_smile:

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Comcast Cable has just offered MCAFEE Av and Firewall to all of their ISP customers
free of charge as long as you remain their customer.
Since I’m not interested in their offer, I wonder if they would reduce my monthly bill??? ;D ;D

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That would be nice because if they do I certainly would like a discount! :smiley: I said to myself Comcast could have saved it’s self alot of money by just pointing all of it’s new customers to avast! or making a deal with avast! for it’s pro version. Either way it would have been much cheaper to deal with avast!.

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I love this avatar! It says it all. ;D