hi all
just comin to the end od another year of norton antivirus, just wondering if any of the other free ones are as good?
kind of want to get rid of it cos it tends to slow down restarts etc.
have read a few articles on pc format mag and they reckon its not worth the trouble with the antivirus installed atall.
weird, but hey ho.
any ideas of which way to go and any recommendations?

Hi, I have never paid for Anti-virus. I use AVG Anti-virus Free. I love it, it works great and isn't a huge memory hog. Another good free one that I have used before is Avast Anti-virus Free.

Hope this helps,
Adam

thx 4 reply am usin avast in vista which i've got in dual boot cos norton wasn't supported at time of instal.
seems ok to me.
so will give it a go.
you haven't had any probs with them?
am usin xp mce 2005 till vista sorts its sheite out.

I won't get Vista yet and haven't even used it much. I might get a new computer with Vista on it in a while once SP1 for Vista comes out. It's been a while since I've used Avast but, it seemed good when I used it. I like AVG a little better though.

Thanks,
Adam

My parents paid for Norton 5.0 back in the day, and I must say that I feel just as safe with AVG FREE as I did with the expensive Norton. I also noticed that Norton slowed the computer down a bunch. Now, I hear that they have solved that situation in their latest release, but hey, if free stuff is just as good, then I would use the free stuff!
AVG all the way!

I've used Norton for a long time, but my last experience was that it was a real system hog (my system specs are not that fanatastic to be fair).

I currently use AVG Free, and that is the top choice I recommend to people. Updates are downloaded regularly, and it's pretty light on the system. Given the fact that it's completely free, this is a bargain to die for.

In my experience i would say no, it really it isn't worth spending your hard earned on commerical security programs if your the average home user like most of us. what is worthit is educating yourself on the security risks posed to us users and learning how to effectively combat them. there are many good freeware apps which, combined, will offer more than adequate protection for your pc. for instance, I use AVG free, Ad-aware, spyware blaster, and spybot for all my anti-spyware/virus/malware needs, and also use a personal firewall and make sure all personal info is wiped with ccleaner when i finish using the computer. i also use the firewall built in to my router, and an anti-rootkit program.

i know, i'm seriously paranoid, ahaha!