Does Norton Antivirus really Slow down you computer?

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

I have personally used Norton, McAffee and AVG antivirus and I found that Norton really started to slow my system down to a crawl with the Auto Protect was on.

I found that I just disabled it all together in order to have my system running properly.

Quote from ZDNet

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/utilities/0,39024210,39172958,00.htm

My annual complaints about Norton AntiVirus, the industry leader, are as follows: Symantec's telephone technical support is very expensive (£18 per live support incident), and Norton AntiVirus traditionally slows all but the fastest PCs. And what's really new about it? I'm sorry to report that nothing has changed this year. In fact, Norton has been coasting on old code for several years, simply dressing it up with an occasional new feature here and there.

This year, Norton AntiVirus 2005 adds a limited firewall designed to block incoming worm code. I say, why not give us a full firewall instead? No, for that, you'll need to cough up another £44.99 for Norton Personal Firewall or go whole hog and get the £59.99 Norton Internet Security suite. Norton AntiVirus 2005 produces a perceptible resource drain -- you'd think they'd have fixed that by now. Worse, in order to completely remove Norton AntiVirus from your PC, you'll need to download a free tool from Symantec (follow the links in the 'Norton AntiVirus installed as a stand-alone product' section of the page).
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2old2care · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject:

Well....I will paste what I was writing in the other forum....when I saw Nathan posted this up....

PASTED:
Go into services to disable NAV stuff...then reboot...disabling it doesn't prevent it from loading...
BUT...while in services you can disable a lot of things that can help...like indexing service, and portable serial number and a few other things that can be constanly "pinging" the USB. There are several websites that can help with windows services.
I understand your plight with a laptop and USB card...and there may not be a "solution" readily do-able.
But running totally unused services and filling your memory is like having the trunk of your 427 filled with bags of sand all the time. (to use your analogy)
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JayDubya · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:17 am Post subject:

Bottom line . . . yes. Especially on my little sis's p3 500. They use norton at work and install ALL the Systemworks programs. They can really use alot of system resources.

Its ok for some people but when the scan starts a simple task can take a long time.

It is better than sohos antivirus
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[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

Yea, I started this thread because a member said that Norton Antivirus didn't affect system performance at all.
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dene · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:13 am Post subject:

Ok i use norton because its reliable and i have also noticed it slows everything down, Can any1 suggest a Antivirus and firewall like norotn please
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[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

JayDubya · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:28 am Post subject:

Ham_fisT · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 2:36 am Post subject:

might as well hang it up during a NAV scan, 'cause you arent going to be doing anything else, but I have never really noticed a slowdown just having autoprotect on.
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Sally · UberTweaker Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1158 Location: WA

I like to recommend Panda. Not only do they have a solid antivirus, but they now have an integrated firewall and even an "internet defense" bundle which is GREAT to have tied in with the anti-virus.
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fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

It's subjective, like you said. If you're running an FX-55 or P4 EE, you probably won't notice it's on, except when gaming. The last time I used Norton, though it had 6 or 7 programs running in the background, all of which randomly used up resources for no apparent reason. On a laptop, Norton will kill you.....but to be fair, any AV program doing a full scan will slow you to a crawl. But yeah, Norton is definitely the worst offender. Goes with their core market niche......Norton is aimed at mom and dad, who have no idea how to manually scan, read what they're looking at, etc etc. It's like cars......grandma's car will have multiple airbags, traction control, automatic suspension adjustments, anti-lock brakes, an auto tranny, and a radio that does everything for you. An enthusiast's sports car will have very few of those things, for performance, but a guy in a Viper is supposed to know how to drive.

I still recommend Norton to "clueless users", who just want the computer for emails, watching badger flash animations, and occasionally playing online games. For everybody else, stay away from Norton, get something less intrusive.
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[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

You thing Norton is completely automated, check out AVG, it does EVERYTHING for you. Updates, scans email, scans drives, and pretty much everything on you comp. It uses around 46megs of ram.

You don't even know it is there.
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Josh · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject:

-=Pyro-Psycho=- · Tweakafile Joined: 26 Dec 2003 Posts: 935 Location: TN

I've used Norton for over 2 years now, and I have never had any problems with it, at least not with the autoprotect. Yeah, you can't really do anything during a system scan, but you can cancel it if you need to do something. I game heavily on my pc and other intesive things (like encode and convert video) and I haven't had a problem with autoprotect. My version is really old though, it's like 2000 or 2001, so maybe the old versions aren't bad? I'm sure there is better software out there, but it's hard to change over, I don't know if I ever will

I probably would if I HAD to purchase some more anti-virus software, then I would just download AVG. But until then, I'm sticking with Norton.
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