Seriously, if you are thinking of getting an antivirus software, you should start clear away from Norton Antivirus family. And if you already have Norton Antivirus installed (because it is a pre-configured system or you are just plain dumb), you should uninstall it immediately. Of course, uninstalling the software will probably take 15 minutes or more because it is such a resource hog and a dead-on system crasher. In fact, I think it should be made illegal in every country. It seems to me that Norton Antivirus has not really changed much over the years. I discovered that it was a resource hog since the launch of Norton Antivirus 2002. It’s been 6 years already (the latest version is 2007) and the software has not improved. I think all they did was add more features to the software. That’s about it.

Yes, the main reason why I would recommend you to remove Norton from your system is because it is a resource hog. It slows down your PC tremedously to the point where you feel like everything is in slow motion. Even if you have a very high end system, I am very sure you didn’t buy that system so that Norton can slow it down right? Free up resources to play that graphic intensive game you just bought! For low-end system, you will be very glad to get rid of that antivirus as you will find that your system starts to speed up a lot. No more waiting for that hour-glass to stop, no more “Not Responding” messages, no more stress, no more long coffee breaks…..

And there are a lot of other alternatives out there. And one of the best commerical offerings is actually Symantec Antivirus Corp Edition. Yes, they are supposed to be the same developers but it seems that the consumer version is pure crap and bloatware while the commercial one rocks. Doesn’t really use a lot of resources and comes with plenty of (useful) features. And if you don’t want to spend money on antivirus, there are several free ones available. These include AVG, Avast, Comodo and Avira. I would recommend AVG and Avira. Both are very good antivirus software.