Vista v.s. Norton

[John King]

When Vista first came on the market the publicity made a lot of it's
security features. Does this mean that I can dispense with (for example)
Norton which I now use on XP?
Does Vista have regular updates of protection against new viruses e.t.c?

Your help will be much appreciated

John King

 

[Bruce Chambers]

When Vista first came on the market the publicity made a lot of it's
security features. Does this mean that I can dispense with (for example)
Norton which I now use on XP?

Well, a great many people would argue that you should dispense with
"Norton" on WinXP, as well. Any number of other anti-virus applications
would have a much lower impact upon your system's performance. I once
used, and recommended, Norton Antivirus and then Norton Internet
Security, for many years, on Win98, WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP. However,
when my subscription to Symantec's updates for Norton Internet Security
2002 came up for renewal (at a cost substantially higher than the
preceding year's subscription), I decided to try less expensive
solutions. I downloaded and installed the free version of GriSoft's AVG
(http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php ) and the free version of
AVAST (http://www.avast.com/). Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised
to see a very noticeable improvement in my PC's performance, once I'd
replaced the Symantec product.

Does Vista have regular updates of protection against new viruses e.t.c?

No, Vista has no built-in anti-virus capability; you'll still need to
install a 3rd party application for this purpose. Vista does include a
firewall that's adequate when properly configured, and Windows Defender,
an anti-spyware/adware tool.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Milo]

Vista as an operating system offers highten security with UAC ( for
prevention ) and among other things, but its not an antivirus by itself or
which has a mechanism to( filter and identify ) viruses and ( delete )such
if ever you or anyone accumulated it. Yet it has with it a built in Windows
Defender for spyware and malware you would encounter on the market today.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

When Vista first came on the market the publicity made a lot of it's
security features. Does this mean that I can dispense with (for example)
Norton which I now use on XP?
Does Vista have regular updates of protection against new viruses e.t.c?

There are two different issues implied by your question:

1. Do you still need an antivirus program with Vista?

2. Should you use Norton Anti-Virus as your antivirus program.

The answer to question 1 is yes. Although there are many security
improvements in Vista, it does *not* contain an antivirus program and
you still need one.

The answer to question 2 is no. As far as I'm concerned, whether on
Vista or XP, Norton Antivirus is the single *worst* product on the
market. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't allow *anything* Norton on any
of my computers.

I recommend the freeware Avast! instead.

 

[David]

There are two different issues implied by your question:

1. Do you still need an antivirus program with Vista?

2. Should you use Norton Anti-Virus as your antivirus program.

The answer to question 1 is yes. Although there are many security
improvements in Vista, it does *not* contain an antivirus program and
you still need one.

The answer to question 2 is no. As far as I'm concerned, whether on
Vista or XP, Norton Antivirus is the single *worst* product on the
market. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't allow *anything* Norton on any
of my computers.

I recommend the freeware Avast! instead.

Wow, its hard to take anyone seriously when they make blanket statements
such as you have. You bias is unwarranted and you basically just come
off looking foolish when you say no one should use NAV. The only "pain"
I've had in loaded NIS is the lengthy installation time. For function
and "impact", it's running as nicely as reviews and my expectations
presumed it would. Could you please move your box down a block or
two? Your ranting about Norton is wearing thin.

Dave

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Wow, its hard to take anyone seriously when they make blanket statements
such as you have. You bias is unwarranted and you basically just come off
looking foolish when you say no one should use NAV. The only "pain" I've
had in loaded NIS is the lengthy installation time. For function and
"impact", it's running as nicely as reviews and my expectations presumed
it would. Could you please move your box down a block or two? Your
ranting about Norton is wearing thin.

Norton will never ever be installed on another machine I use. That thing
became Live Update toast and toasted itself on a routine basis, and I had to
reinstall the thing numerous times back in year 2001.

The machine with Vista pre installed came with Norton and the first thing I
did was uninstall the whole Norton nightmare suite.

I went to my solid as a rock NOD32.

 

[David A. Spicer]

I'll second that! I'm currently running Norton 360 on my 32-bit notebook and
I plan to also install in on my 64-bit desktop. Both running Vista Ultimate.

 

[phypps]

I also agree.
I suspect most Norton bashers are basing their opinion on (much) older
versions of the software.
Maybe not unreasonably so either in all fairness, as in the past Norton was
a hog and could slow many a system to crawl from time to time.
But.... things have moved on.
Norton 360 is not an upgrade but a new program written with Vista in mind.
Vista itself handles "background" tasks much more intelligently with regard
to performance.
I have 360 on Vista Ultimate x64, MS updates on auto, and Media Centre
updates its TV guide as well.
Together they all work very nicely and I have to admit I hardly know they
are there.

Phypps

 

[Victek]

I also agree.

I suspect most Norton bashers are basing their opinion on (much) older
versions of the software.
Maybe not unreasonably so either in all fairness, as in the past Norton
was a hog and could slow many a system to crawl from time to time.
But.... things have moved on.
Norton 360 is not an upgrade but a new program written with Vista in mind.
Vista itself handles "background" tasks much more intelligently with
regard to performance.
I have 360 on Vista Ultimate x64, MS updates on auto, and Media Centre
updates its TV guide as well.
Together they all work very nicely and I have to admit I hardly know they
are there.

Phypps

Regarding Norton Internet Security (NIS), I've supported computers with NIS
2006 and NIS 2007 installed and they were painfully slow to boot. When the
systems were finally booted there was still a noticeable impact on
performance caused by NIS, and these were not "much older" versions of the
product. I've also experienced the problems with LiveUpdate breaking,
difficulty installing/uninstalling, etc. When things go wrong they can be
hard to straighten out, especially for novice users. This hasn't happened
often for me, but I haven't notice much improvement in recent versions with
regard to these issues. On the upside, I have heard good things about
Norton 360 - apparently it impacts performance much less. I haven't had a
chance to test it yet, but there's a mostly positive review at this site:

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_security_suites.asp

 

[Guest]

OK, I have had Norton on my XP for several years with no problems. Now I
have a new system with Vista and McAfee installed. All was well until I
upgraded to Ultimate now I get all kinds of messages saying I'm not protected
ie., everything in McAfee seems to be disabled. Any thoughts as to how to
proceed?

 

[Ken Blake]

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
Wow, its hard to take anyone seriously when they make blanket statements
such as you have. You bias is unwarranted and you basically just come off
looking foolish when you say no one should use NAV. The only "pain" I've
had in loaded NIS is the lengthy installation time. For function and
"impact", it's running as nicely as reviews and my expectations presumed
it would. Could you please move your box down a block or two? Your
ranting about Norton is wearing thin.

It's *my* opinion, and like all opinions, yes, it reflects my bias. My bias
is anti-Norton; yours is pro-Norton. I think my bias is warranted and yours
unwarranted ; you have the opposite opinion. That's fine. The OP is free to
take the opinion (and bias) of whichever of us (or neither) he prefers.

 

[David]

Regarding Norton Internet Security (NIS), I've supported computers
with NIS 2006 and NIS 2007 installed and they were painfully slow to
boot. When the systems were finally booted there was still a
noticeable impact on performance caused by NIS, and these were not
"much older" versions of the product. I've also experienced the
problems with LiveUpdate breaking, difficulty installing/uninstalling,
etc. When things go wrong they can be hard to straighten out,
especially for novice users. This hasn't happened often for me, but I
haven't notice much improvement in recent versions with regard to
these issues. On the upside, I have heard good things about Norton
360 - apparently it impacts performance much less. I haven't had a
chance to test it yet, but there's a mostly positive review at this site:

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_security_suites.asp

I guarantee you have something else unrelated to Norton that is bogging
down your start up. What kinda processor, how much memory, etc? I've
installed NIS on two laptops and there is no discernible difference.
wait... i lied. I gain control of the desktop faster than when i run
the kludgy and FREE (which is what it is worth) AVG. I'm particular
enamored with McAfee either, which came on both our Vista laptops.

I"m not affiliated with Symantec--just a reasonably happy customer of
some of their products. No axe to grind, as does the "MVP" here. sigh.

Dave (NOT an "MVP")

 

[David]

It's *my* opinion, and like all opinions, yes, it reflects my bias. My bias
is anti-Norton; yours is pro-Norton. I think my bias is warranted and yours
unwarranted ; you have the opposite opinion. That's fine. The OP is free to
take the opinion (and bias) of whichever of us (or neither) he prefers.

There is a difference between our opinions: you are blinded by your
hatred of NIS, despite the FACT that many people and organization
happily run it and prefer it to other internet security suites. I don't
make blanket statements that YOUR favorite anti virus program is without
any redeeming features. Next time, I humbly suggest you just tout the
positives of the program you feel most suited to the task, and skip the
total condemnation of a product that a number of other posters in this
thread have mentioned works quite well from them. (Which, BTW is
exactly what I expected, given the popularity and usefulness of NIS)

oh, and i have nothing against disagreement.

Dave

 

[Victek]

OK, I have had Norton on my XP for several years with no problems. Now I
have a new system with Vista and McAfee installed. All was well until I
upgraded to Ultimate now I get all kinds of messages saying I'm not
protected
ie., everything in McAfee seems to be disabled. Any thoughts as to how to
proceed?

Try uninstalling McAffee, rebooting, and then reinstalling it.

 

[Arjan]

The reason I joined this forum is for tech help. One of the main
reasons I like Norton is their tech help support. They are really nice
and will stay on it until everything is resolved. To me that is
important.

That's the reason why it costs more and more each year.
The same with Vista, you don't only pay for the OS itself, you pay for the
Help you can get by using Microsoft Helpdesk for example. Vista could be a
Lot cheaper if you were a Computer "specialist".
Just buy e.g. a RAM and place it into your computer, and you'll have the
rights to buy Win. Vista for a much lower price because they expect you to
solve your own Software/Hardware problems because you "are" a "specialist".
At least, that's what I read...
Anyway, it was a bit off topic

 

[Guest]

Well, I'm running NAV for quite a no. of years already. I don't have
problems with it. Yes, other's say your system is slower compared to a system
without one but the impact is not significant at all. The important thing of
having an antivirus is to protect yourself and degraded (a bit) performance
is a price of having protection. Since RAM price is becoming cheaper each
year then upgrade RAM to boost performance.

I have also tried AVG and McAffee products.
AVG Free - Good because its free and realtime "protection". Not too Good in
terms of protection.
McAfee - Bad on Performance. Slows my system down compared with NAV. Good in
terms of protection.

This is of course based on my experience.

 

[Guest]

Victek,
Based on many of the posts, I uninstalled only the Virus checking portion of
McAfee
and then installed 'Avast' and all is now well with the world. McAfee seems
to like this new arrangement. Thanks for you suggestion

 

[Paul Smith]

There is a difference between our opinions: you are blinded by your hatred
of NIS

That's your opinion. I agree with Ken.

The way Symantec has been acting over the years they deserve nothing less
than going out of business. Just take the whole propaganda campaign and
whining over PatchGuard in 64-bit. They want to hack your kernel, and come
SP1 we'll all have to deal with their unimprovements to the OS.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[Sally]

I used to use McAfee for a number of years.
After viruses almost disabled my computer, I used the Norton cleaner and it
fixed everything.

After that I switched to Norton Internet Security and I have never had a
problem since.
I mistakenly updated to the new Norton 360, it disabled by XP by doubling my
memory backup.
I could not do anything and quickly got rid of it.
I reinstalled the Internet Security and everything went back to normal, but
I realized it was time to change my computer.

I have Vista Home Premium and put in Norton Internet Security 2007.
I love it and recommend it. 360 is good for those with lots of memory space
and that need a program to do everything for them.
I have never liked the Systemworks and that is part of 360, I am very happy
without it but I am still a Norton Fan.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:10:03 -0500, Crito

Defender, UAC and the built-in firewall stops 99.99% of the threats I'm
likely to encounter today.

I'd add an antivirus scanner to that.

And for the other .01% it's much easier and safer to restore from
backups than try to clean my system of the infection.

ROTFL!

And how do you filter the malware you never bothered to detect from
your "full system backup" that has the malware built into it?

I can do a complete restore of a Vista Business installation
from DVD-RWs in about 20 minutes. No worrying about "did I get all of
it?" or "did cleaning that file corrupt it?"

See above. It sounds like you are relying on time (the "great
X-axis") to scope in what you want and scope out what you don't want.

That in turn implies you are expecting the adverse impact of malware
to be immediately obvious.

However, a typical malware strategy is to lie low and not attract
immediate attention, so that it can pervade "full system backups".

Or is the installation you are restoring, one that was made long ago?

If so, you'd want to preserve all the data you created since then, and
you'd have to be sure this did not maintain the malware.

Even the most limited account rights will let "you" write to your data
set, so won't stop malware from infecting it, and backups thereof.

I'm so sick of folks waving "just" backup and "just" wipe and rebuild
as if these were magically simple ways to solve problems.

They are not. Both approaches are sound, have their place, but
involve complexity approaching that of formal malware management.

------------ ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

The most accurate diagnostic instrument
in medicine is the Retrospectoscope