I have used Norton now for 3 years and have had to use there customer service centre once.....I have now have changed my anti virus provider.

David Lloyd, Cheshire, UK

I recently cleaned 100 plus "naughties" of my friends computer which had Norton Anti Virus running. The computer was so infested the cursor would hardly move.

I used SpyBot to remove most of the infestation.

SpyBot has a program called Tea Timer which BLOCKS changing the reg file without your permission. Unfortunately, Tea Timer's screen display overwrites text thus making it hard to use.

A reader, LA, USA

I just switch from AVG Free to Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 after I found out that my system was infected by almost a dozen virusses/rootkits/trojans! AVG had never stopped them from infecting my system. Free is not always your best choice!

Arnold Boer, Coevorden, The Netherlands,

Absolutely agree. Nortons is overpriced, slow, bloated and hard to remove. I used their online help to get rid of a trojan. I had to pay extra for this and it didn't work. I would NEVER use Nortons. Places like Spyware Warrior and Castle Cops all have lists of free, safe software. Filseclab has a great free firewall and free antivirus.

kenj, Albury, Australia

Paid a lot for Norton, indeed, slows down your systems and is rather expensive. I'm now working with Avira on my laptop. Brilliant! When my subscription ends, it's going to br freeware on my systems!

Martin Pilon, Voorhout, Netherlands

There is an ever growing mountain of evidence that
Norton and McAfee antivirus products, typically preinstalled
to the financial advantage of PC vendors, are NOT
compatible with Vista/Windows Mail.

They are causing truckloads of problems and heartache to
inexperiences users of new PC's with Vista.

There are a host of send/recive problems that are fixed
by simply uninstalling them and replacing them with
free alternatives such as Avast.

The evidence for this assertion is copious and can be seen
at the Microsoft Community forums such as....
microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail,

Julian, London, UK

I'd have to ask with Windows Vista Firewall attaining a 64 percent, what was actually compared. Was that using Administrator functions to turn on outgoing as well as the default settings? The strength in any of these programs resides in the tuning it to your specific machine and usage. Tuning is more likely to occur in free software than in bundled packages where the consumer "trusts" the vendor's settings, or doesn't want to deal with adjusting it.. Knowledge is the best protection. Applying that knowlege takes a little work and compromise. If you don't know what a rootkit or trojan is, then your product is getting a 100 percent rating based on how you use your computer. If you're simply using a product "off the shelf" and are constantly bombarded by ads, you get a 0 percent rating.

Mark Honzell, Bloomington, IL

I agrees with Martin Kaplan regarding rootkits not being mentions on the results rating. AGV supply a very good free anti-rootkits software that will detect rootkits in case in the anti-virus scanner missed it. Rootkits is a tiny zip files that is hidden deep in the registry.

F. Mc Corr, Dublin, Ireland

I've used Norton for some time and was shocked to find that it slows down the PC much more than the average virus or spyware program. The cure is worse than the disease in this case! And I also experienced cases where it said it found a virus but couldn't remove it, or the dedicated removal program that you have to download from the Norton site can't find the virus. So despite the "research and development" of these large vendors, you're still stuck with low quality software that is certainly not "all in one" and that is inconsistent within its components.

Gerrit Hiddink, Utrecht, Netherlands,

I think processGuard by diamond CS (Paid but worth every penny) and my fire wall Comodo (free) along with SpywareGuard(free)) have kept me free of problems .scanning is important- Spy Bot , Arovax, etc. but the results have all been good after using the above.

Jason, Ukiah , Ca.

Same experience here. Years ago I used to swear by Norton, but every successive version became more aggressive as a resource hog. I chucked it, installed Avast! and Spybot S&D, and have never looked back.

Freaky Deaky, Nashville, TN

[quote]The benefit of purchasing from one of the established manufacturers is that you also get the expertise, research and development infrastructure and experience[/quote] Personally, I think there is a lot of expertise in the free products. Further, it is know that some of these "established companies" are *NOT* reporting certain software created by law enforcement entities, whereas free (well, open source) software most probably will (as this behaviour would be spotted there). Then again, As far as I know most free Windows security software isn't open source. [quote]the advantage of all-in-one packages was that [...] and that updates were automatic[/quote] It's possible to create scripts (there are ready-made scripts too) to automate the updating of ClamAV on Linux. You can log any action en can send an alert (by any means) if somethings goes wrong, just like commercial software. This is not rocket-sience and a lot of people have this.

Rob, Waardenburg,

Sandboxie, Returnil and or Shadow Defender are a much better alternative to using any AV.

Given a bit of time to get used to and I doubt you will be without them.

Much safer than any AV.

Tester, Fremantle, WA

I have been using Avira for over a year now and -compared to Symantec/Norton and Mcafee which I used in the past am very happy with the speed of updates, the ease of use of the program (including it's installation) and its resource utilization.

I bought a laptop a year ago and experienced some crashes and performance issues - these all went away after I uninstalled the 60-day preview of Norton Anti-virus that came with it... To Symantec's credit - they did release a patch later, but I had already switched to Avira and decided I liked it more...

Walter, Brisbane, Australia

I had a similar experience with Norton, not only slowing up my machine, but really bringing the thing to a standstill and often for no apparent reason.
I came across this article which contains a pack of 20 security software which are free to download and includes the ones mentioned above plus some others. http://download.chip.eu/en/standardbeitrag_en_688389.html .

Its a little bit complicated, but there is a description about the software under the picture and then also the link to download it.

Darren, Munich,

gdata commercials should be removed. Obviously.
And btw: AVG does kill rootkits.gdata is a pretty good product, but it seems Martin's reaction is commercially influenced to say the least.
Also note there are some good free rootkit detection and removal options like Microsoft's rootkit revealer and F-secure's Blacklight.
So to sum up what I recommend: AVG + Spybot + Blacklight(not free for long, alas) or rootkit revealer + a good free two way firewall (the one in vista is already good, otherwise something like ashampoo or zonealarm. Might be a bit more work, but almost all of these are updated frequently, have good support and are industry leaders. gdata isn't.
As a whole, I agree with the conclusions of this survey and wholeheartedly recommend using the free options for home users. But not for corporate use: that's a different model with different requirements. maybe gdata would be a viable option there ;-)

thaddy de koning, amsterdam, the netherlands

I've used 4-5 of the top line virus suites and avast is excellent compared to norton, mcafee, ca or even kaspersky. The problem with the above is that they are resource pigs and(or) very complicated to use for the average computer user. Mcafee slowed down a 256 mgb ram computer to the point that it was agony to use the machine. I installed avast on my mums machine and she just loves it and its user friendly. The computer loves it too, its back to zippy on the pin-head!!! Downloads updates automatically, is intuitive to operate...why buy???

Gilbert, Lexington, Kentucky USA

nod32 from Eset is not included in this test?? It's the best in many many tests.

Jeroen, Amsterdam, Netherlands

There is an every growing mountain of evidence that Norton and McAfee antivirus software is not compatible with Windows Mail on Vista systems.

see the Microsoft Community Forum....
microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail

Julian, London, UK

I have AVG and Avira and I highly recommend both.

They don't pick up all infections e.g. Virtumonde Trojan but in the majority of cases they provide a accessible and free service.
The more people that have these programs the more likely infections are stopped before any real damage is done.

Arron Taylor, Corby, Northamptonshire

I have used Symantec for quite a long time, but recently switched to Avast!. I noticed that my PC performs much better with Avast! running in the background. Symantec seems to cause much more overhead. The automatic update feature of Avast! is simply fantastic, no settings to adjust, it connects to the internet and downloads the latest definitions in seconds. There is also a great feauture that 'remembers' the state of your programs so they can easily be restored when they do get infected. Avast!, to me, is a no-brainer.

Willem Kunkels, Purmerend, The Netherlands

Agree with Dave, Alicante. Norton is bloat-ware that slows down your system to the point its unusable AND its impossible to remove parts of the program without a format.

Roger, Epping,

Exactly the same experience for me, free AVG cleaned all the virusses i had and uses low system memory ,Norton couldn't clean the virusses and it slows your pc down terribly

manfred holland, Nantes, France

avg and spy bot are allyou will ever need the work better than anything you can buy .ihave used both norton and mcafee and found both to be not very good.so go ahead and down load the freebies the are brilliant.

william rogers, cardiff,

I have used all the free and not-free anti-virus programms you mention in your article in time.
I do not agree with your conclusions.
The rating results look grate but these are infact bad when you are online for many hours or days. For example when downloading movies or when visiting high risk internet sites (erotic sites: very high percentage of internet use)
Comparing these results with Norton is also a mistake.
Norton has difficulty when it comes to spyware, trojan horses and firewall.
Why do you not compare your results with for example GDATA.
Last and worst mistake you make is that you do not talk about rootkits. All off the free programms do not find the rootkits on the computer, neither does your Norton comparison.
And yes, GDATA kills the rootkits

martin kaplan, utrecht, netherlands

I used Norton for years,paying the fees, I found that it was slowing up my machine and giving false alerts, alowing viruses in then telling me they could not be cleaned out. I decided to remove it, the software got stuck in my PC . I went on to symantech for a solution none worked and I ended up cleaning down my PC. I use AVG now and never have any problems.

Dave Madley, Alicante, Spain

No news at all. For several years I've used Avira.
I've never had any problem with my pc.

W.P.Grandiek, Zwijndrecht, Netherland