[Leica] Antivirus question

[leica at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig)]

Phil

Norton slows down the startup and the whole computer, and does not offer 
more or better protection than many less costly tools. I do not recommend it 
to anybody. To be honest it's one of the biggest crap I ever installed on a 
PC. If you want to remove it, the usual uninstall process (by the 
application uninstall icon on the program folder, or by system>software) 
does not really clean your computer from that pest. 

After tons of complaints about that fact, Symantec was forced to publish a 
removal tool that works: http://tinyurl.com/7eqv8

Personally I use the german tool antivir http://www.free-av.de/en/index.html 
(also available in english), it's free if you don't mind the ad screen after 
the daily update, or costs 20 Euro a year without the ad screen. It's 
programmed by one skilled person, and has won about every price such a tool 
can whin around here in Europe. It does only the job you expect it to do, 
and does not slow down neither the computer's startup nor it's regular 
operating.

A friend had caught a heavy trojan recently which completely froze down his 
pc. Neither Norton (on his computer) nor Kaspersky (on his network's server) 
had detected anything or were able to kill it. After a quick install, 
Antivir recognized and banned the beast, the other ones took several days to 
update their virus definition databases for that particular one. (Admittedly 
this is always a race against the time and sometimes this one is faster, 
another time the other one.)

Didier






>Gang, I'm looking for suggestions.  I just got a new Toshiba laptop that
>comes with Norton AV as a trial.  Before I install it I'd like to have
>recommendations for alternative AV systems, either free or subscription.  I
>have used both NAV and McAfee in the past.  I know some people think NAV
>clutters up your machine over time.
>
>Any opinions?
>I'll be cross-posting so some of you might see this twice -- sorry. 
>Phil Swango