AVG vs Norton

Howdy from Texas. I am also a computer tech. I administer a public education district with about 350 Macs, PC's, and Linux Boxes. On the side, however, I work on the staff's person computers and laptops. Two of them that I have just finished with had both McAfee and Symantec, respectively. The latter, admittedly, hadn't paid for updates in about a year. Both of them had been infected by some pretty harsh viruses. The first had shut off access to the PC manager, and control panel, the second was simply shutting the computer down whenever one tried to access any management tools. In both cases, I uninstalled their security packages, and installed AVG free edition.

The first computer found 6 trojans / viruses, 4 before I ever did the first update, the second found 4 before and 4 after the updates. I also had to install Spybot and HijackThis! to kill the processes so that the anti-virus programs could successfully delete them.

Bottom line, if you care at all about your online security, get rid of Norton / Symantec and McAfee.

I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist: Is is possible, considering that McAfee or Norton / Symantec are pre-installed on many Windows package machines (HP Dell, etc.), that Windows and these vendors are in cahoots with one another.... since they are both making money on it???? The Vendors by selling updates, and Windows by selling new copies of OSes that are "more secure". I ran WinME until XP SP2. Even though everyone said it was insecure. With AVG installed... I never had a problem with it.

Cappii,

Sounds like we are tech's of a like mind.

My very favorite Symantec program is the "Norton Removal tool"
Currently found Here!

I use it on any and every PC I work on, or new PC's that I set up.

AVG (Grisoft, Inc.) has recently released AVG 8.0 FREE and there will be a Service Pack released for it shortly.

They have increased the protection to include Spyware and Trojans.
I've been installing it for all my customers (home PC users only) and both I and they love it.

Maybe someone should rename this forum to "Norton Removal".

Just a thought

The Doctor