Is it worth renewing Norton Antivirus?

[Sidge]

My one year subscription to Norton that came with the laptop has now expired. Is it worth the money to renew it?

I also have Ad-Aware and Spybot installed, and didn't know whether I should fork out for Norton again too.

Adaware & Spybot are only anti-spyware, not anti virus - you need both, but it doesn't have to be Norton.

It is worth removing every trace of Norton from your machine - after you've uninstalled, Live Update can linger, whining pathetically that something is still using it and slowing your machine down- don't believe it - get rid of it.

I'd go with AVG/Avast/Kaspersky for anti-virus, keep your current anti-spyware & use a good firewall such as Zone Alarm.

Norton is evil, slow, resource hungry and extortionate. I'd recommend Kaspersky too. Actually, I'd recommend Linux, but if you must run Windows, Kaspersky is the one to go for. I used to work for a small charity which had very strange network problems: I installed Kaspersky and it found about four viruses running around which a nice up-to-date Norton had completely ignored.