Is Norton Antivirus REALLY bad?

I've had NAV on my computer since Circuit City installed its software and I've heard news from Digg.com that its a great hazard. They have some pretty stupid views sometime, but overall, they're pretty tech-savvy. Regardless of the numerous commendations and awards its received from many trusted websites, does Norton really slow down your computer, and is it nearly impossible to uninstall? What would you recommend?

NAV is to the point where it's nothing but a memory and CPU hog - I quit using it after NAV 2005 (no difference, just new looks and small new features)

NAV can slow down your computer, but being impossible to uninstall is not true, there's a lot of articles on the internet on how to completely remove Norton products - search it on Google - I know that one major program to use it the Norton Removal tool.

I recommending get avast! anti-virus, its free for personal use, uses far less memory and CPU than NAV and the updates are always free and updated constantly (NAV subscriptions only last for around 6 - 12 months)

YES!!! It's that bad, dag nabbit!

AVG Free Edition + Windows Vista Defender does the trick for my high-level Internet protection needs. :P

A buddy of mine has NAV. He reloaded his system last week and reinstalled NAV (purchased last winter). Upon activation and update, he got a popup informing him he was in violation of the NAV licensing agreement. His version is also installed on his wife's computer. So, he called the service help line and after twenty minutes, actually spoke to a human being. Again, he was told he was in violation of the NAV license, having installed it on two computers. The service "assistant" couldn't seem to understand that the license specifically states my friend's version of NAV could legally be installed on up to three different computers. After another ten minutes, much loudness and a threat to go to the BBB, the "assistant's" supervisor issued my buddy a new product key. Now that's what I call customer service! (insert sarcasm) :o

AVG, 'cause it's free... :D

Norton Anti-Virus demands too much of system resources, in addition it performs were in certain regards than free less hardware intensive AV software and includes nagware to get you to subscribe to their virus description updates.

It also doesn't help that its so widely used many viruses and malware as part of their work target and disable it directly.

I use NOD32 for my needs and I love it, it is definitely the least intensive on your computer out of all I have tried. If you are looking for an All-In-One free product, I have been hearing good things about Blink. Check it out here:

http://www.eeye.com/html/products/blink/personal/

I haven't tried Norton 2007, but I've heard that it's actually pretty good and a huge improvement from the previous versions. Even then, I'd still go for NOD32. It doesn't use up very many resources and has a very high detection rate.User10293

Norton sucks, I get infected with a lot of Trojan.

I agree, Nod32 rullz I'm using it from a long time and is the best so far(Mc Afee, Norton, Kaspersky, BitDefender used before Nod 32)

According to a lot of comparative site including the well renown av-comparatives.com, NO, NORTON IS ACTUALLY ON OF THE BEST AV ON THE MARKET.

Nod32 actually is the one you could consider the best ATM

Norton is the AV with the smallest false positive rate, (0% from many test), has a good detection rate, (about 97% on the average) and despite what most ppl think, it use far less ressource from your computer then AVG free AV, which is one of the worst AV you can get at the time (Windows LiveOne care being the worst)

Bashing Norton is not knowing antiviruses at all, there are far worst antivirus around

The biggest downside of Norton is its costumer support which is awfull (I havent tried the costumer support of other AV but should be not so different since the majority of them have a costumer support in India...)

I am using Norton 360, its new(I got it for free from work and I can use it for a year). I find its actually pretty dam good and the reviews seem pretty solid, no lower than 8/10. I'm sure there is better but its debatable. Btw BitDefender is probably the best. Here is a good top 10 anti-virus list from PC world (its a year old but its still reliable):

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,124475-page,1/article.html

AVG is 10 :lol: I always recommended AntiVir and avast! (which are the best free ones) 8)