Symantec Says Free AV Software Can’t “Keep Up”

[DaedalusHelios]

Obama approves of Norton on every government computer.

1. Do you have a source on it, or are you Sarah Palin logged into [H] simply spreading lies. ("source" means where is your link?)

2. If its true(highly unlikely): does approve mean simply ok with, or suggests it over other solutions?

 

[p4gs]

1. Do you have a source on it, or are you Sarah Palin logged into [H] simply spreading lies. ("source" means where is your link?)

2. If its true(highly unlikely): does approve mean simply ok with, or suggests it over other solutions?

Even if Obama says he approves of it, what kind of credibility does that hold? Is he an IT(Security) guru? What kind of experience does he have with other products upon which he can make a claim such as that?

Just because he is the President does not mean he is a credible source of all information.

Anyways, I've found that AVG gives a lot of people of false sense of security. While it has been a great free solution in the past, it isn't a great solution overall.

Well, depending on what you do on the internet and how cautious/"paranoid" you are when you use the internet, AVG may or may not be a great solution compared to other AVS. I would not recommend AVG for a family computer in which 2 adults and 2/3 teens/kids are using it. I wouldn't even recommend the AVG security suite.

Seriously, NOD32, Kaspersky, and Avira AntiVir Premium will offer you significantly better protection overall.

And, yes, AVG is pretty bloated now. Also, it has a tendency to pick up a lot more false positives than other programs.

Norton is mediocre at best. It causes a lot more problems than it fixes.

 

[GilmourD]

1. Do you have a source on it, or are you Sarah Palin logged into [H] simply spreading lies. ("source" means where is your link?)

2. If its true(highly unlikely): does approve mean simply ok with, or suggests it over other solutions?

You quoted a guy named mullet. I think that right there invalidates anything he has to say.

 

[DragonMaster]

The latest version of AVG is more bloated than the Goodyear Blimp. They've also gone right down the tubes.

Quoted for truth. AVG 8+ makes every computers I have extremely slooowwwwwwww. I used AVG until version 7, and then had to find another option.

Avast was bloated, annoying, didn't work correctly and doesn't have a good detection rate.
Comodo works quite well, and is free even on Windows Server. It seems to have a small effect on computer responsiveness though, and the HIPS application control is so annoying you just want to disable it.

Avira on the other side doesn't affect the computer's responsiveness (especially since version 9), is said to have an excellent detection rate and isn't annoying at all once you tweak things a bit (pop-up and update window). (There are some false positives when you do things you aren't supposed to do though.) Avira is completely bloat-free as the anti-virus is only that: an anti-virus. Norton also includes an anti-malware, anti-spyware, firewall, etc. which is one of the reasons why it's a piece of bloated software, just like AVG 8 and avast, the two bloated free AV suites. I think Hall claims free AVs can't compete because they don't include all that bloat.

 

[MrGuvernment]

man so much norton bashing.


Norton has always been well ranked in finding Viruses, the problem with Norton was it was bloated in it's resource usage, but was good at what it did, and the new version finally god rid of the bloat.

 

[DragonMaster]

Oh, and here's some Symantec experience: someone brought me a laptop that kept crashing, and Windows would barely boot. I thought the computer was filled with spyware and viruses. I installed Spybot and Avira and found absolutely nothing (scanning in safe mode). Then, I uninstalled ZoneAlarm, and magically, the computer started working just like new.

 

[MrGuvernment]

ZoneAlarm isnt Symantec?

 

[DragonMaster]

Norton has always been well ranked in finding Viruses

When people call me up to check for viruses, they're all using Norton, which doesn't find anything and crashes all the time. (There are a few AVG and avast cases as well)

 

[DragonMaster]

ZoneAlarm isnt Symantec?

You're right... Didn't Symantec buy something last year though?

 

[darkjedi]

I have been a Computer consultant for 15 years. Norton software is by far the worst software in the known universe. Every other computer guy I know feels the same. If one of my customers is running Norton, their PC is very slow and takes a good 5 minutes to boot. After I remove it, they are always amazed at the speed increase and overall performance increase.

As to the free software, I find Avast! to be some of the best AV software out there. The home edition is free, but it finds more viruses than Norton. I sometimes use it to clean viruses from computers that were running Norton.

To sum up, never ever use Norton.

 

[auspexd]

You quoted a guy named mullet. I think that right there invalidates anything he has to say.

Heh heh, seriously. It's like when students email me papers and their email is like hotbunny69 @ inappropriate dot com. For all that is good and holy the uni provides an email for you... maybe you should use it.

Avira or Nod plus Untangle or Comodo firewall ftw.

It always amuses and sometimes annoys me when people interject irrelevant political commentary into a conversation because they have nothing of value to say otherwise. Like the time I was having a chat with a colleague of mine about MBR and GPT tables in the lab one day when all of a sudden some retard decides to spout some nonsense about how 'O-bam-a' is going to regulate, tax and control the ENTIRE internet. We both looked at each other and had virtually the same thought at the same time: So that is what an internet troll really looks like in their natural habitat... then we beat him to death with his own unibody macbook with the jovial cheering of the crowded lab drowning out the terror of his hapless screams.

 

[gaspah]

RoFL as opposed to what? the heap of shit they deliver? I just use Malwarebytes Anti-Malware if i'm suspicious that somehow i've managed to pick something up.. free and works a treat... Symantec... shove that up your ***

 

[swatbat]

Yeah, well, you're probably a weeaboo.

Why would you buy something when you can get something that is just as effective for free?

AVG Free + Spybot S&D + Malwarebytes + Hijack This + Trend Micro Java Based Scan = yeah, Norton is pretty much screwed.

Norton saying cheaper/free stuff can't keep up is like a drug pusher telling you he has the best dope in town. Is he telling the truth? Of course not. He is desperate for that sale.

Because you just listed 5 programs to do the job a single paid for program can do(something other than norton). I don't have a problem paying for quality software. 30 bucks a year for av protection doesn't bother me a bit. I've been running eset myself for the last few years without issue. Before that I was running kaspersky.

man so much norton bashing.


Norton has always been well ranked in finding Viruses, the problem with Norton was it was bloated in it's resource usage, but was good at what it did, and the new version finally god rid of the bloat.

I can't really speak for the home versions of Norton but the business version of it(symantec endpoint protection) sucks balls at finding stuff. Symantec really dropped the ball on things like spyware detection. Endpoint is also very bloated. We have been dropping it as quick as possible.

 

[niconx]

I have been a Computer consultant for 15 years. Norton software is by far the worst software in the known universe. Every other computer guy I know feels the same. If one of my customers is running Norton, their PC is very slow and takes a good 5 minutes to boot. After I remove it, they are always amazed at the speed increase and overall performance increase.
To sum up, never ever use Norton.

The 2009 version actually is very very fast and installs very fast also, even in a VM it runs fast. The problem is that it doesn't detect a damn thing due to technical and political reasons. Political means they are scared they are gonna be sued.

 

[zombiebeat]

The latest version of AVG is more bloated than the Goodyear Blimp. They've also gone right down the tubes.

QFT

I used AVG for (IIRC) about 8 years now (if its been around that long). The latest update foisted a yahoo browser toolbar add-in upon me*, that was the last straw, I had disabled a lot of the bloatware (linkscanner etc) to keep it useable, the toolbar was a step too far.

I tried AVAST! its pretty good but almost as bloated as AVG, so Avira for the win!

*pity me I need to use IE for some work applications.

 

[StaticShoes]

That being said I used to like their products, until they started making the program call home every 20 minutes that would stop anything I was doing/crash any game I was playing due to it deciding it deserved any and all resources my PC had.

Agreed. Along with McAfee which would dial my connection (if it wasn't already connected, when I had 56k) at the same interval (20 minutes), find nothing to update yet NOT disconnect, rendering my phone line useless.

I tried the Norton suite when it was packaged with some software I had purchased. I had to use jaws of life on my registry to pry Norton the hell out of it, it was the most annoying resource hog I had ever experienced. I don't remember how many times I'd be playing online games with people, they would crash, come back and say "Sorry Norton started doing something and my PC locked up". Yea, that's really great software.

 

[p4gs]

Because you just listed 5 programs to do the job a single paid for program can do(something other than norton). I don't have a problem paying for quality software. 30 bucks a year for av protection doesn't bother me a bit. I've been running eset myself for the last few years without issue. Before that I was running kaspersky.



I can't really speak for the home versions of Norton but the business version of it(symantec endpoint protection) sucks balls at finding stuff. Symantec really dropped the ball on things like spyware detection. Endpoint is also very bloated. We have been dropping it as quick as possible.

Really? I've been using Endpoint protection for about a year now (provided by my university for free) and have had no problems with it. In fact, I have it installed on multiple computers (Vista 64bit and XP 32bit OSs) and it works flawlessly without slowing any computer down. It picks up a few false positives every now and then but that's about it. I recently switched to Kaspersky for Windows 7 because the Endpoint 11 installation my university provides doesn't work with Windows 7 haha. When they release a version that is compatible with Windows 7, I will probably use that instead.

Actually, at the beginning of last year when I went back to school, one of my friends called me asking to help him fix his computer because it had been running slow. He was using an older version of AVG and spybot, but neither of them were updated or anything. He had a bunch of viruses and it was running horribly slow. I uninstalled AVG and spybot and installed Endpoint 11. It scanned and removed all of the viruses/spyware except Virtumonde which I had to remove using Malwarebytes. After that, his computer was running really well considering he only had 512mb of RAM.

Also, I installed it on a computer that had Kaspersky Internet Security 09 installed for awhile but kept crashing because of some Kaspersky driver issue. I spent a good hour or 2 uninstalling and reinstalling it, running ccleaner and other optimizers between installations to make sure leftover garbage was removed. Eventually I gave up and just put Endpoint 11 on it and it works great.

Oh, also: Trend Micro is much worse compared to Norton. It takes a good 5 minutes to load completely at startup. It slows stuff down soooo much. Norton has gotten a little better recently in terms of being bloated, but it still isn't that efficient when compared to Kaspersky, NOD32, and AntiVir.

 

[JediFonger]

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests

/thread

 

[oROEchimaru]

to bad avira/avast/avg + malwarebytes > any symantec product

 

[Exavior]

What is funny about this is how on Symantecs forum one of their employees said it wasn't their job to find viruses, it is just their job to write definitions for viruses that their customers find and report.

They also claimed that 10 missed viruses is WAY better than 1 false positive.

That is all you ever see them go on about on their forum is that Symantec is the best AV software as it has the fewest false positives.

I don't give a fuck about false positives. I care about that computer actually be protected.

 

[Drewis]

+1

Norton blows. Does not even provide 1/10th of the protection my Avast Free edition does.

And you know why im NOT paying for an AV program? Its because this FREE one is much better and doesnt bloat my memory usage or cause my system to freeze/corrupt files upon uninstallation..

 

[Vermillion]

Heh heh, seriously. It's like when students email me papers and their email is like hotbunny69 @ inappropriate dot com. For all that is good and holy the uni provides an email for you... maybe you should use it.

Avira or Nod plus Untangle or Comodo firewall ftw.

It always amuses and sometimes annoys me when people interject irrelevant political commentary into a conversation because they have nothing of value to say otherwise. Like the time I was having a chat with a colleague of mine about MBR and GPT tables in the lab one day when all of a sudden some retard decides to spout some nonsense about how 'O-bam-a' is going to regulate, tax and control the ENTIRE internet. We both looked at each other and had virtually the same thought at the same time: So that is what an internet troll really looks like in their natural habitat... then we beat him to death with his own unibody macbook with the jovial cheering of the crowded lab drowning out the terror of his hapless screams.

This made me laugh.

Anyways...

Norton is starting to clean up their act but overall they're still piss poor compared to Avira. I've pushed Avira on my family and relatives if they weren't using at least Avast. AVG has long since got down the crapper.

In the future I may push MSE at relatives as well. I've been using the beta and like it quite a bit. I'll may do that because I'm not a fan of the path Avira is headed down with all the additional scanning for other junk because I find it causes Avira to be slower then previous generations.

Bloated and good scanning or lightweight and mediocre scanning just don't cut it. People want lightweight and good scanning.

 

[swatbat]

Really? I've been using Endpoint protection for about a year now (provided by my university for free) and have had no problems with it. In fact, I have it installed on multiple computers (Vista 64bit and XP 32bit OSs) and it works flawlessly without slowing any computer down. It picks up a few false positives every now and then but that's about it. I recently switched to Kaspersky for Windows 7 because the Endpoint 11 installation my university provides doesn't work with Windows 7 haha. When they release a version that is compatible with Windows 7, I will probably use that instead.

Actually, at the beginning of last year when I went back to school, one of my friends called me asking to help him fix his computer because it had been running slow. He was using an older version of AVG and spybot, but neither of them were updated or anything. He had a bunch of viruses and it was running horribly slow. I uninstalled AVG and spybot and installed Endpoint 11. It scanned and removed all of the viruses/spyware except Virtumonde which I had to remove using Malwarebytes. After that, his computer was running really well considering he only had 512mb of RAM.

Also, I installed it on a computer that had Kaspersky Internet Security 09 installed for awhile but kept crashing because of some Kaspersky driver issue. I spent a good hour or 2 uninstalling and reinstalling it, running ccleaner and other optimizers between installations to make sure leftover garbage was removed. Eventually I gave up and just put Endpoint 11 on it and it works great.

Oh, also: Trend Micro is much worse compared to Norton. It takes a good 5 minutes to load completely at startup. It slows stuff down soooo much. Norton has gotten a little better recently in terms of being bloated, but it still isn't that efficient when compared to Kaspersky, NOD32, and AntiVir.

I will say the later builds of 11 have gotten better. When one of our clients first went to it they had to upgrade 75 notebooks to a gig of memory to be able to run it. They were pentium m 1.5/1.6ghz models that the client used to scan heavy machinery. Endpoint slowed them to a crawl until the memory was doubled.

Another client was having this issue where symantec would get angry and just start filling the hard drives of the desktops with temp files. A desktop would mess up, we would go delete like 40 to 60 gigs of symantec temp files and it would go back to normal. Symantec had no fix for this. Our fix was moving them to eset when the subscription came up. We have also had to load superantispyware or malwarebytes on a bunch of machines gunning endpoint to clean them up.

Other issues we have seen are with the extra parts of endpoint. Got to the point we only installed the av section of it on anything. It also caused big issues with remote agents and backup exec. Symantec once again had no fix and tried to tell me how downgrading the servers to symantec av 10 was not the correct solution even though it worked. Considering they couldn't figure out the issue they can piss off.

 

[InorganicMatter]

Alternatively, you can run Vista/7, leave the default security on, use some common sense in web browsing, and achieve the same level of protection.

 

[T20]

All the people that complain about Norton, should give the new 2009 version a chance. It installed under 60secs, and boot up fast. The only other one I would recommand is NOS32.

 

[Exavior]

man so much norton bashing.


Norton has always been well ranked in finding Viruses, the problem with Norton was it was bloated in it's resource usage, but was good at what it did, and the new version finally god rid of the bloat.

Really? I have been using their products at work for years and would never claim them being very good. SAV 10 required me to run a second program on the machine to remove spyware / adware even though they claimed their software removed it. I also had to run a online virus scanner every few weeks and that would find a few infected files that Symantec missed.

In the middle of our crossover to SEP 11, we had some machines running SAV 10 and some running SEP 11. We had a virus outbreak on the network spreading through a messenger program. SEP 11 detected and removed it, SAV 10 did not. I had to remove it myself. 2 weeks later SAV 10 got the definitions to remove a few trace that I had missed.

Even now I have seen SEP 11, either detect and leave infections, or just not detect stuff that I myself can manually find and remove.

There is also the issue with SEP 11 where every version breaks something new and screws your computer up worse than the last version while not always find stuff. Earily versions caused the machines to run slow and have lots of other issues. MR4 MP1 broke networking on every single computer. MR4 MP1a fixed that but by that time I already had to manually uninstall it off every machine to get them working again.

MR4 MP2 seems to be the first decent release in this line, Although even this one causes some issues with preformance while scanning every now and then.

The only thing that Symantec has successfully done is given me about 75 hours of overtime since I installed the first version of SEP 11.

 

[Bambi]

Avira just popped up his speech as a virus

 

[p4gs]

Really? I have been using their products at work for years and would never claim them being very good. SAV 10 required me to run a second program on the machine to remove spyware / adware even though they claimed their software removed it. I also had to run a online virus scanner every few weeks and that would find a few infected files that Symantec missed.

In the middle of our crossover to SEP 11, we had some machines running SAV 10 and some running SEP 11. We had a virus outbreak on the network spreading through a messenger program. SEP 11 detected and removed it, SAV 10 did not. I had to remove it myself. 2 weeks later SAV 10 got the definitions to remove a few trace that I had missed.

Even now I have seen SEP 11, either detect and leave infections, or just not detect stuff that I myself can manually find and remove.

There is also the issue with SEP 11 where every version breaks something new and screws your computer up worse than the last version while not always find stuff. Earily versions caused the machines to run slow and have lots of other issues. MR4 MP1 broke networking on every single computer. MR4 MP1a fixed that but by that time I already had to manually uninstall it off every machine to get them working again.

MR4 MP2 seems to be the first decent release in this line, Although even this one causes some issues with preformance while scanning every now and then.

The only thing that Symantec has successfully done is given me about 75 hours of overtime since I installed the first version of SEP 11.

Hahaha

Why aren't more companies/corporations using business/enterprise editions of Kaspersky or ESET?

 

[Master Blaster]

I'm a ESET - NOD32 man myself.

 

[TechieSooner]

to bad avira/avast/avg + malwarebytes > any symantec product

I still don't understand the love of AVG...
It's a bloated hog whose detection rates are very poor.

Avira is simply the best free AV. Avast is a close second. Other than that- nothing else out there (at least until Microsoft's new product comes out final- we'll see how it does).

All the people that complain about Norton, should give the new 2009 version a chance. It installed under 60secs, and boot up fast. The only other one I would recommand is NOS32.

Again, it's not the 2009 version as much as their track record. It'd be like taking an older car to a mechanic, getting it repaired time and time again, just to have it keep failing. He then gets a new facility, state of the art equipment, and actually knows how to fix it...

But you, knowing his shitty track record, aren't going to go back. He's going to have to show some strong and continued improvements to ever consider again.

Same it is with Norton.

 

[Dan_D]

+1 Symantec lost the clue about three or four years ago.

I've used both Symantech Endpoint Protection at work and I have to tell you it's the biggest drag on the system I've had in a long time. Loading up malware signatures from the past ten years has a big ass foot print.

The companies that have free anti-virus/anti-malware products also have better paid solutions. That doesn't mean every paid solution those companies offer are all worth the price, but you can tell that they are at least trying to show that there's value in the paid solution.

Norton Anti-Virus has sucked for longer than that. It has been a bloated piece of shit that often wrecks the machines its installed on. I've seen Norton Anti-Virus actually kill OS installs on several machines just from installation alone. Don't get me started on their useless Norton Utilities/Security software.

Norton Anything=Garbage

 

[Exavior]

Hahaha

Why aren't more companies/corporations using business/enterprise editions of Kaspersky or ESET?

I've actually been wanting to look for other solutions. I looked at a few last year or the year before (can't rember which now), but their management program were not very good. I'll need to look at those two. Another problem I have is that we pay for 3 years at a time since that is the cheapest. So I only have a small windows of time that I can switch without management getting mad that we are wasting money by paying for two different AV programs.

 

[TexasAg05]

Sounds like someone is starting to feel the competition of 'Free.'

Propaganda FTL.

 

[END]

I been using avast free home for years and i find it is alot better than nortons bloatware. plain and simple they are full of shat.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Norton Anti-Virus has sucked for longer than that. It has been a bloated piece of shit that often wrecks the machines its installed on. I've seen Norton Anti-Virus actually kill OS installs on several machines just from installation alone. Don't get me started on their useless Norton Utilities/Security software.

Norton Anything=Garbage

I want to say the last "decent" version of Norton Antivirus was from around 2001 although it may have been a bit before that. For me, that's been a while and I have avoided all Norton products since.

It was around that time that I switched to AVG and ran that for a number of years until switching to Avira which I have been running for probably a year or so now. AVG got really bloated and started adding a lot of things in which I didn't want or need. The detection rates of AVG were also going down so it was definitely a good time to switch and I haven't really had much of a complaint since.

That said, I'm glad there are so many antivirus products out there, especially the free ones. All the different products mean competition in the market which usually means there is at least one really good product and other good products as well as the crappy ones. I love having choice and the competition basically keeps most of the companies on their toes. Yes, the versions of Norton from the last several years show this isn't always the case but if it wasn't for competition from the other companies, Norton and McAfee would probably be our only choices. Just think of how shitty it would be if it was only Norton and McAfee out there. Hell, the only reason Norton seems to finally be pulling the products out of the gutter is due to much better products released by other companies. You can run only on your old reputation for only so long before it catches up to you.

 

[Axiomatic]

Hmmmm Bloated vs. Free....

What do I want? Bloated Symantec A/V software or free A/V software... bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free?

Yeah... I'll take FREE.

 

[p4gs]

Hmmmm Bloated vs. Free....

What do I want? Bloated Symantec A/V software or free A/V software... bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free? bloated or free?

Yeah... I'll take FREE.

what about Bloated vs. Free vs. Free&Bloated

i.e. Norton vs. Avira vs. AVG

free doesn't necessarily mean GOOD. or even MEDIOCRE.

 

[evilsofa]

av-comparatives does have a point about downgrading Avira for the false positives. Just this week, McAfee got scolded pretty hard for false-positiving a critical system file.

Note that even Avira is only detecting 69% of new malware (AVG scored 45%, Avast scored 42%, and Norton scored 35%, if you're curious). I would assume that, after a certain point, there's a correlation between false positives and detection of new malware - the closer your scanner gets to 100%, the more false positives you'll get.

Shouldn't we consider whether it's possible that Avira is gaming the system by cranking up the detection rate at the expense of false positives, just enough to put them at the top of the list without getting stupid like McAfee? I think that may be a legit reason why av-comparatives is ranking three other AV products over Avira.

The report I'm reading from is the May 2009 Retrospective/Proactive Test:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report22.pdf

 

[niconx]

I should say something about AVG antivirus here. I used it on a daily basis to fix countless hundreds borked computers. It works very well because it goes after viruses that are actually in the wild. Avira was just as good though. AVG Antivirus doesn't do a thing about spyware though and the AVG antispyware utility doesn't work so well. Spybot+Superantispyware+smitfraudfix was my combo for spyware.

 

[Renegade_Azzy]

Cant keep up? that's what my computer does with any Symantec program installed. They seem to want you to have a machine dedicated to one their software, nothing else.