Norton renewel soon... stay or go??

[PersonalClown]

My Norton Internet security is up for renewal at the end of November and I was wondering if the geeky and technical minded among you would recommend staying or going some where else.

I want the lot! Anti virus, firewalls, pop up blockers etc.

I don't mind paying for a good lot but Free wouldn't be at all bad!!!

I would normally say "ditch Norton", but as you put it, you "want everything"...

In the past I was a strong supporter of Norton SystemWorks and other tools that came out. Until about 2003, I think, when the removal of Norton tools got to be more than a little tedious, if someone had problems with Norton.

Norton has (IMO) become a little bloated and getting ever deeper into the OS, so you now need to download tools to remove it (not just having the original CD, which itself was a pain if a client had "filed" it somewhere).

Stick with it if you like it, unless someone comes up with some alternatives you feel will suit your needs.

Personally, I would no longer give Norton houseroom, but that's from a tired (30 years in IT) WebDude (not touched Vista, likely to go to Linux for all 12+ PCs, rather than Windows 7, and ready to put Microsoft and Norton behind me forever, completely stopping PC support, pretty soon!)

Thanks very much for the help.
I've just been getting earache from people saying that Norton only ever fix problems they create.

It works for me and I've never had a problem. Just wanted to know if anyone more technical would advise me to steer clear.

If you have more than one comuputer, Tesco is doing a 3-user version of Kaspersky Internet Security for £24 (tell them I sent you ). I have used Kaspersky for years and never, never had any undectected malware - even on the kids PCs where they have administrator rights.

The parental controls can be a bit restrictive, but that is a problem with them all I have found.

LF - have used AVG for anti-virus but must say it seems to be getting bigger and slower too. Have tried it with testing web links (ie to offer some degree of protection against bad websites) and got the impression (from my firewall software) that it was opening sites twice (major pain if you have a limited quota of data traffic - in my case 5 GB from home on the Three mobile network dongle as access).

Kaspersky does sound a sensible deal at that price, and is widely used (in commercial mail software, such as MDaemon, with hourly updates) so something I'd put some trust in (even though I am not using it at home... certainly one I'd pay for at that price, even though AVG is free).