Symantec Norton AV Retail - questions

[David W.E. Roberts]

Hi,

just a quick sanity check.

(1) Systems often ship with a 90 day trial to lock you in (various
m'facturers of AV s/w). Do all retail copies of Norton AV come with a 1 year
licence?

(2) Norton 2003 is cheaper than Norton 2004 (no sh*t Sherlock) - is it good
value to buy the 2003 version? Or does the 2004 version out-perform enough
to be worth the extra money?

Looking as though buying Norton (esp. 2003) could be cheaper than paying the
first year support on McAfee as shipped by Dell on a new system (which has
reached the 90 day point).

However don't want to part with the money and find it is another 90 day
version!

TIA
Dave R

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[Conor]

Hi,

just a quick sanity check.

(1) Systems often ship with a 90 day trial to lock you in (various
m'facturers of AV s/w). Do all retail copies of Norton AV come with a 1 year
licence?

(2) Norton 2003 is cheaper than Norton 2004 (no sh*t Sherlock) - is it good
value to buy the 2003 version? Or does the 2004 version out-perform enough
to be worth the extra money?

Looking as though buying Norton (esp. 2003) could be cheaper than paying the
first year support on McAfee as shipped by Dell on a new system (which has
reached the 90 day point).

However don't want to part with the money and find it is another 90 day
version!

1) Norton comes with a 1 year licence.
2) NAV2003 won't have the latest scanning engine.

Look at NOD32 which is about $39 for the first year then $27 per year
after that. Not as resource hungry as NAV and constantly gets the 100%
figure with Virus Bulletin.

 

[Dale Benjamin]

Hi, David,

Hi,

just a quick sanity check.

(1) Systems often ship with a 90 day trial to lock you in (various
m'facturers of AV s/w). Do all retail copies of Norton AV come with a 1 year
licence?

No, some come with only a 3 month license for
upgrades to the AV.

(2) Norton 2003 is cheaper than Norton 2004 (no sh*t Sherlock) - is it good
value to buy the 2003 version? Or does the 2004 version out-perform enough
to be worth the extra money?

Very likely, 2003 will be as good as 2004, unless
you really need another feature.

Looking as though buying Norton (esp. 2003)

could be cheaper than paying the

first year support on McAfee as shipped by Dell on a new system (which has
reached the 90 day point).

McAfee is very respectable, too, but kind of hard
to figure they write, I got to try it someday. If
cost is an object check out
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,113462,00.asp
and
http://www.freebyte.com/antivirus/

At many stores one may find Norton AV or Internet
Security with a rebate that makes your purchase
cost less than $1. I've used NIS for a couple
years and the only problems I've had are crashes
with the AV active scan turned on, and some
problem with it turned off. Norton AV gets good
grades, the firewall don't.

I use an anti-virus program called Anti-Vir and a
firewall called Sygate, the free personal versions
most of the time. I have Norton IS disabled
ordinarilly on the System Configuration|Startup on
WinMe. A couple times a week I disable Anti-Vir
and Sygate and enable Norton Internet Security,
update it, and run the anti-virus. It gets good
marks!

However don't want to part with the money and find it is another 90 day
version!

That's OK.