holy cow! (Norton)

[shegeek72]

Well, I uninstalled Norton (SW, AV, FW) off my system and was
interested to see if there was any difference in speed.

An understatement! Before programs would take seconds to load, now they
snap open! Including such resource hungry programs like photoshop.

I've switched to AVG, Comodo FW (both free) and System Mechanic 7 (only
paid for program). If you're running Norton I highly recommend getting
rid of that resource hog! I know, I'm preaching to the choir, though
there may be some lurkers that use Symantec products.

 

[HiEv]

Well, I uninstalled Norton (SW, AV, FW) off my system and was
interested to see if there was any difference in speed.

An understatement! Before programs would take seconds to load, now they
snap open! Including such resource hungry programs like photoshop. [snip]
If you're running Norton I highly recommend getting
rid of that resource hog!

[snip]

The speed difference probably has less to do with Norton being a
"resource hog" and more to do with it scanning the software every time
before it lets it run. That creates an annoying delay, yes, but it may
also make you safer. Personally, I turn that scanning off because I
find the delay too annoying and I scan everything I download before I
run it, so the wasted time simply isn't worth it to me.

 

[Guest]

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The speed difference probably has less to do with Norton being a
"resource hog" and more to do with it scanning the software every time
before it lets it run. That creates an annoying delay, yes, but it may
also make you safer. Personally, I turn that scanning off because I
find the delay too annoying and I scan everything I download before I
run it, so the wasted time simply isn't worth it to me.

It might also be to do with the fact that - I believe, but might be wrong here
- - by default Norton will scan every single file that is opened, not just
programs. It's in my copy as "File System Realtime Scan", and on my work
machine has so far apparantly scanned 4300 files in just under an hour...

- --
Graham Cox

You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
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[shegeek72]

The speed difference probably has less to do with Norton being a
"resource hog" and more to do with it scanning the software every time
before it lets it run. That creates an annoying delay, yes, but it may
also make you safer. Personally, I turn that scanning off because I
find the delay too annoying and I scan everything I download before I
run it, so the wasted time simply isn't worth it to me.

Why would it need to scan the same programs over and over? And there
should be a way to easily turn that part off - I had Norton for years
and never saw that feature, or if I saw it I didn't know it screwed
with every program every time I started it..

Anyway, I was tired of paying those damn yearly "renewal" fees (and the
annoying nag screens) and being coerced to upgrade.

 

[Big Bad Bob]

Why would it need to scan the same programs over and over?

in theory they could be modified in real time by a virus or trojan,
copying itself into other applications (some early DOS viruses did this,
even to programs already 'infected', slowly increasing file sizes until
programs wouldn't load any more).

And there should be a way to easily turn that part off

turn off real-time scanning?

Anyway, I was tired of paying those damn yearly "renewal" fees (and the
annoying nag screens) and being coerced to upgrade.

ACK on that. I was displeased also with Norton's tendency to be too far
behind on signature files.


The best anti-virus protection is: use a non-MS OS (yeah I saw the
crosspost, I'm in AH so there)

The next best anti-virus protection is: don't use Internet Explorer or
MS Outlook ('Outlook Express' seems to be ok when you disable HTML
display and scripting).

The next best anti-virus protection after that is: don't download
executable binaries unless you're absolution sure they're safe. BUILD
FROM SOURCE! (and if you can, examine the source first to make sure
there's nothing fishy going on, or have someone else that's
knowledgeable do it for you)

[and of course keep up to date with patches]