Re: Symantec Antivirus Corporate vs. Norton Anti-Virus

From: Quaoar (quaoar_at_tenthplanet.net)
Date: 10/04/04 

Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2004 23:55:34 -0600

Leythos wrote:
> In article <sL%7d.3671$j24.1156@clgrps12>, Johnny_Canuck1@hotmail.com
> says...
>> This question isn't for me since I will be running Kapersky
>> anti-virus.
>>
>> I have a friend who is running Symantec AntiVirus Corporate (in
>> Windows XP) at work and he was told that Norton Anti-Virus was a
>> superior product.
>>
>> Any thoughts on what are the differences between the two, and which
>> one is better? (i.e. as in more effective at finding viruses and
>> keeping the system safe, less CPU overhead, etc.).
>
> I run Symantec Corp Edition products on all of our Home and Business
> systems, and all of our clients run Symantec AV products. While using
> Symantec products we've not experienced any compromises by viruses,
> not had any installation or performance problems, and feel reasonably
> virus secure.
>
> I have also used Norton 2000~2004 products on other systems, and we
> avoid the Suites (NIS, NPF, etc..), we only use Norton Anti-Virus.
> It's been the same, reliable, easy, secure, not one system
> compromised.
>
> We just did a cleaning of a Sorority at a local university, 40
> machines, from all different places, mostly Windows XP, about 6
> Windows 98, 1 Win ME, and 1 MAC. The systems were running mostly
> McAfee (about 25 of them), about 10 were running Norton 2002 & 2004,
> and several were running CA AV software.
>
> There were three machines that were clean - they had Norton AV 2004 on
> them, were updated, and had XP SP1 and auto-update turned on. The MAC
> was clean, but it had not been patched for the latest OS/X flaws.
>
> The machines with McAfee products were the most infected - anywhere
> from 100 to more than 400 viruses found (we removed McAfee and used
> Free AVG on those machines). Several were so bad that we wiped them.
> In almost every case the McAfee product was installed by the computer
> vendor (Dell being the most common) and not setup to pull updates -
> not one person knew that they had to register to get updates, and
> it's not clear that they were unprotected).
>
> We cleaned the systems, installed free AVG Personal or, if a valid
> subscription was present, we updated and re-ran the scans (double
> checking with AVG also). We installed XP-SP2, disabled File/Printer
> sharing and all seems to be running well.
>
> If they could have afforded it I would have install Symantec Corporate
> Small Business Edition 8.1 on every one of them and set the server to
> control updates and functions.
>
> --

I have always believed that Norton AV is a superior product. The
problem with Norton and the rest of Symantec's products is that they
cannot be readily removed. Consequently these products rank right up
there with AOL as dangerous for the home user. If Symantec could or
would take the time to clean out their astounding number of registry
entries they might regain my trust and the trust of others. As it
stands now, any vendor that cannot clean up after themselves is every
bit as undesireable for the home user as the average virus infection.
It's should be a simple issue which raises the question of why Symantec
is unwilling.

Q

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