McAafee or norton which is best?

Question

Wev'e had Norton for a few years , had a few problems . Is McAfee any better?

Answer 1

★★ VIRUS SCANNERS & TIPS ★★

◙ The very best virus scanners are free. Mcafee & Norton Antivirus are mostly hype and won't do as good as the free ones. -- About.com & Smart Computing Magazine

◙ Download and install AVG. Use it first and see if it finds any viruses or trojans.

☞ http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1
☞ http://www.grisoft.com/doc/products-avg-anti-virus-free-edition/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

◙ After running AVG go here and run this virus scanner online. There is no need to install it on your computer.

☞ http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

◙ Microsoft's New Live Safety Center. Download this scanner to check and remove spyware, viruses, get rid of obsolete files and junk off your computer, and improve your PCs performance.

☞ http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm?s_cid=msep

◙ The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks computers running Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 for infections by specific, prevalent malicious software—including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom—and helps remove any infection found. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed. You can run this tool online FREE.

☞ http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

◙ Before downloading email attachments in Gmail and Yahoo Mail click on the link that says, "Scan With Norton Antivirus".

◙ Before downloading any software from the internet type it into http://groups.google.com/ to see if that title is known for spyware or viruses. Google Groups has over 1 billion posts spanning 25 years to help you. Even after checking it there ALWAYS scan it before opening it. You just can't be too careful. -- Smart Computing Magazine

◙ A lot of the download sites like http://www.download.com/ and http://www.tucows.com/ scan software before releasing it to the public. But just for safety sake you should still scan it yourself.

◙ Here is a really great article on browser hijacking. This will show you how to get rid of it. There is a tutorial and software to get rid of part of it. You'll need to make some changes to your computer's registry to get rid of the rest of it. Click on the chatroom link on their main page if you need help.

☞ http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/

◙ Here is Yahoo!'s Internet Security section.

☞ http://security.yahoo.com/

◙ Below is Mcafee's Site Adviser. Type in a URL in the form here and you will find out if the site you want to go to is known for phising (getting your personal info under false pretenses), viruses, spyware, and many other things. You can use the tool on their site or download an program to do that.

☞ http://www.siteadvisor.com/

◙ Get more information at these PC Magazine Web sites.

☞ http://www.pcmag.com/
☞ http://www.smartcomputing.com/

◙ Top 100 Computer & Software Magazines.

☞ http://netvalley.com/top100mag.html

★★ TOOLS FOR SPECIFIC VIRUSES & TIPS ★★

◙ Sometimes you'll get a particularly nasty virus that cannot be removed with conventional tools. For times like these you can (quite often not always) download a removal tool for that specific virus. Below are some sites you should look at.

☞ http://www.grisoft.com/doc/Utilities/Ing/us/tpl/tpl01
☞ http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/tools.list.html
☞ http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Download/browserFreeRemovalTool/

◙ Below is a tool called "Stinger" that Mcafee put together with all 54 of it's tools in it.

☞ http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

Answer 2

McAfee WORKS. Norton MAY WORK. There's a difference. Both will slow your system down. The corporate versions of both are much better at using system resources than the home user version (the corporate versions can strip out the junk they think the unknowing home user wants).

McAfee is more effective than Norton.

What Really Slows Windows Down - Guess which 2 companies rank 1, 2, 3?
http://www.thepcspy.com/articles/other/what_really_slows_windows_down/1

Link from What Really Slows Windows Down:
(This illustrates the performance of roughly 60 virus scanners against almost 150,000 virus samples... Norton = 83% effective; McAfee = 91-93% effective. Which would you rather have?

Personally, I never recommend Norton to my clients and I thank consultants who do (couple months back, I had a client with the Symantec (corporate version of Norton) Antivirus product that failed to detect a virus. I got to charge them $1600 to come in and clean their computers manually using a boot CD. Funny thing, Dr. Web antivirus - it detected the malware using 3 month old definitions and Norton's "up-to-date" definitions didn't notice a thing - until a new definition set came out 3 days later.

One last thing, users report viruses, that's true. But MOST antivirus vendors setup honeypots - systems intentionally left unprotected on the internet to get infected. This is so they can find and analyze viruses as quickly as possible. Further, MANY of the bigger companies SHARE their samples with the other companies as a courtesy to help ensure everyone is protected - note: they share the virus SAMPLES, NOT the instructions for removing them. Given that... I wonder how many people symantec has looking over the samples from other companies... when 3 months later they still haven't caught one that another company did 3 months ago...
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/default.asp?id=82

Answer 3

2

Answer 4

No, depends on what you want it for... Both Norton and McAfee are system speed hoggers.

If you are looking for simple virus protection I recommend going the free route...

Why?

Virus companies detect viruses based upon definitions (defenitions being the list of items the scanner is able to detect and the coded signatures) Where do definitions come from? How do the know about viruses?

By people using them, the more people that use a type of scanner, the more viruses are caught and the quicker definitions are made to detect them.

My point being that, tons and tons of people are switching to FREE virus software, because they believe they shouldnt have to pay for protection 50 bucks every year... Therefore more people using the free scanners, gives more credibility to how many viruses are discovered by those free companies...

You will always hear why people say free is the better way to go, but maybe now you have an understanding of why.

I would reccomend one of two routes to take in virus protection, both of which do NOT take up near as much system performance as NORTON and McAfee

#1 AVG Free found on http://www.download.com just search AVG and you will see the free download. 11 million people total have got it so far just from that site.

#2 If you feel the need to go with name brand, simply because it is, I would go with Symantec (which was founded in 1983 which has been around the longest) NORTON is the generic of symantec, symantec itself is however different.

If you go symantec route, get SYMANTEC ANTIVIRUS CORPORATE EDITION. Not easy to get, most colleges hand it out for free. But it is the most powerful scanner in the world, and uses barely any performance to run.

Answer 5

Both will give you nothing but trouble. I speak from experience the latest was with the new norton that has a feature that is supposed to let you go back to the way your computer was before the problem. This feature totally crashed my computer and wrote garbage all over my hard drive. I have been using "AVG which you can get free off the Internet and have had no trouble since.

Answer 6

McAfee is soooo much better, I had Norton on my notebook (purchased with it) after a year of being shut out of microsoft word too often, I called them (Norton) to have a tech talk me through removing it- it's too powerful and blocks almost anything you add to your computer after it's been installed. McAfee is strong but not inhibiting, never ever had a problem with it- highly suggest it and it's cheaper too.

Answer 7

I have tried both AVG and Norton and that i'd definetly bypass with Norton. AVG fairly were given on my nerves with each and each and every of the protection pop-united statesand cookies it replaced into rejecting so i could not bypass on some web pages. So I switched to Norton and it replaced into impressive. only put in it and forgot about it. It do not have stupid pop-united statesunless some thing is fairly incorrect. wish this facilitates.

Answer 8

I agree.
Use a freebie like AVG although I think Norton is better than McAfee.