Norton or McAfee?

[Gen.Kenobi]

I use Kaspersky Internet Security.

Sounds a little odd, when asking to you decide what to do. And odd when it detects registry alterations, such as when installing a new game. But it's a great Anti-Virus. He can really protect your computer. It's a soft antivirus [do not requires much RAM] but keep scanning your PC, even when it's on.
But you can make it decide what to do himself, when a suspicious thing happens. You can play online for "free", but some games such as C&C Generals, you must create a certain rule to make the program open the "doors"[TCI\IP, this things]
No probleman when playing Battlefront.

I recommend it. They have a free version, just try and see what happens. Keep the security of the firewall on low, because even on medium it's hard security.

Never got a virus with it. 9/10. I would try, if i was you.

[VF501]

Avira Anti Vir+Spybot S&D+ Spyware Blaster= Total system lockdown. Nothing gets in without your explicit permission between Avira and Spybot, and Spyware Blaster is a excellent removal and blocker tool.

No need to adjust any real settings, low resource consumption, active protection, and no virus definition conflicts between them.

[Dohnutt]

I use Norton.
It seems like its own virus to me, though. Before I finally shut down a scan that would pop up in its own window every day at 8 p.m., I hated Norton so much. I'd be in the middle of playing Star Wars Battlefront or Arcanists and then all of the sudden the game minimizes, I have a minute of lag for everything on the screen to load correctly, then I'd have to spend another minute or more waiting for the scan to close after I click X, then I'd slowly get back into Battlefront, and I'd be disconnected from the server I was in, or people who were in my server would get disconnected, and I'd experience lag for the next 5-10 minutes of my gameplay. In the case of Arcanists, the game screen would go white, and I'd be cut off from the game and lose everything I had staked in games.
Thankfully, I made it so scans that pop up like that can only happen manually.
Although when I got that problem solved, this new Norton PC Checkup thing pops up every day at 6:23 p.m. now, and I cant figure out how to turn it off. It makes my computer lag, and it doesn't even do anything. It'll make you see what you want to see, "PC performance: Good" and "Something: Good" but then it'll go 'but somethings wrong! You need to buy this for a price I'm trying to make seem inexpensive!'
Makes me think Norton is a greedy troll that doesnt really want to help you.
But a question about Norton, did I read right that Norton is constantly running scans, like ones that you dont know about?

No offense, but from what I've gathered on these forums, you don't know much about computers. I'm not at all trying to be condescending, as even I don't know much, compared to others on these forums - so I give them the right to do the same as what I'm doing to you now. These daily scans can be turned off, or changed to a different time - say when you're at school. I believe the scans on my computer are set to Friday night, when I'm at Youth Group, and nobody else is around to be on the computer.

The new Norton, 2009, is much better in terms of silent and out-of-the-way scanning and updating. There are flash updates (I believe that's what they're called) where they check for updates quite often... not constantly though. There's a feature on 2009 where you can set it to "Silent Mode" - this is basically a gaming mode. It turns off all updates, popups/notifications. Silent Mode activates as soon as you go into fullscreen mode, and deactivates when you leave fullscreen. You can also access it by right-clicking on the Norton icon, and choosing "Turn on Silent Mode".

I've never encountered anything where Norton tries to sell you something? Except the "upgrade to the next version" thing you get when the subscription runs out. But that's not at all in your face or annoying.

I guess that's my little... defense for Norton

[FragMe!]

What you could also try is bitdefender online scan. (http://bitdefender.com).
It will do a scan of your computer even with your current virus software running. My boss did it on his work computer and the only virus it found was in the TrendMicro virus definition file.
It does not take any info from your computer and there is an option not to have any scan results transmitted either. The online scan is free.

[crazytieguy]

I use BitDefender. It's simple, unobtrusive and the AV ratings are excellent.

[Karnage]

AVG Antivirus is #1 on my list for bad detections. Whatever you do, don't use that program. It's awful. It misses actual viruses and false-detects viruses where there are none.

The results appear to be mixed. I've read articles (each of which did what would appear to be valid tests) that show AVG as yielding fewer false positives than other A-Vs, and articles that show it as being the worst in terms of generating false positives. Speaking from personal experience, I've been very satisfied with AVG - probably because it's a fairly "low-profile" program and I don't have a lot of processing power on my desktop.

Regardless, if you take the free protection route, it's always best to use multiple programs - I use AVG, SpyBot S&D, and MalwareBytes Antimalware (this is really good; although I only have used it once or twice for on-demand scans when I was concerned - it picks up a lot that other free programs do not and it seems to have a pretty good e-reputation).

And of course an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don't surf unsafe and it will hardly matter what AV you have, because you very likely won't ever have a virus problem.

I'm gonna have to agree with Maveritchell on this one. I've used AVG for years and have never had any problems with viruses. Norton, in my opinion, is very experienced in annoying the crap out of me.

Guess it just comes down to preference.

[redgroupclan]

Norton, in my opinion, is very experienced in annoying the crap out of me.

Thats why I let my mom switch our AV to McAfee.
Our computer has gone a little faster and we get fewer interruptions now.
And now we dont have to wait 2 minutes for the Norton icon to appear on our taskbar. When we had Norton, we had to wait that looonnggg couple of minutes for the icon to appear, or else if we tried to open IE, it wouldn't load until the Norton icon appeared. Afterwards there would be a period of lag if we opened up IE too early. Now we just wait 10 seconds for McAfee, and Im not sure if we even have to wait that long. I just wait 10 seconds anyways.

[obiboba3po]

I and some relatives use mcafee. why? its free with comcast and rarely get viruses.

[Maveritchell]

Bit of a bump there champ.