A Rant About McAfee and Norton Anti-Virus
January 13th 2010 08:00 am
I’ve always been quite techy and know what I’m doing where computers are concerned. A lot of my friends and family know this so I have a number of calls over the years to fix technology related problems.
So it was again tonight: I was sat with a friend’s laptop which didn’t want to connect to the Internet anymore.
However, thankfully, I have been in this position before with other people’s PCs. Lots of times. So I knew exactly what to look for first.
A quick check through the installed applications highlighted immediately what the problem was: Norton Anti-Virus software.
McAfee and Norton anti-virus software are the most annoying applications I have ever come across. They are bloated and cause more problems than they fix. Why else would a program come with a special uninstaller that you can download from their website? Because they break your PC and are a pain to get rid of!!!
They scare the public into buying their products at ridiculous prices when people really don’t have to. If there is anybody out there who has a Windows PC heed my next piece of advice: Never pay for anti-virus software for personal use.
My advise is to use one of the following products instead which are all free, all really good and don’t mess up your computer:
Microsoft Security Essentials
The latest application to join the party but the one I am going to mention first as it is my current product of choice. It integrates extremely well into Windows (you don’t notice it is there most of the time), it rates highly on virus catching capabilities and is developed by a household name for that extra piece of mind.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
AVG Anti-Virus
This is the product that I loved up until Microsoft’s offering and is still installed on a number of PCs I have fixed over the years. Again it is free, rates highly and is very popular. Get it if you have an allergy to Microsoft products! Be careful when navigating their website though as they try and confuse you with links to the pay for version. Just keep clicking the link for the free version though and you will be fine.
Linda responded on 18 Jan 2010 at 9:59 pm #
I’ve used AVG for about a year now – and haven’t looked back. There’s a great “help” forum to use for knowledge sharing.
Both Norton and McAffee were really annoying and an utter waste of time. My old tower PC was wrecked because McAfee didn’t seem to stop viruses and trojans. When Igot the new (ex-work) pc, I tried Norton. Got fed upwith being charged over and over again. I eventually looked for free software – and discovered AVG!