AntiVirus Software: AGV vs Norton
 

Hey all, quick question re: AVG Antivirus Software...I have been using Norton for the last 4 yrs or so and really haven't had any problems, up until a few weeks ago.
My old gaming Rig now belongs to my wife at her business, she had a BSOD (while I was out of town at work), I told her that it was likely due to a "Driver Issue" (has happened once before on that PC) and that I fixed it before by booting into Safe Mode, uninstalling Video Driver, running Driver Cleaner and re-installing Video Driver, all was fine.
Anyhow, I obviously wasn't going to walk her through the process on a phone, so I told her to take the PC to our local shop.
He advised her that the GPU was no good....I immediately called him and told him of my past issue and wanted to see if he tried this (the obvious first), he said he wasn't sure as his Tech was working on it, but he would give it a go.
Next thing I know the PC is back with my wife (same GPU, obviously it was fine), but they advised that they had found a number of Viruses and Spyware, which they fixed, also on the invoice stated "Re-install" OS.
Seems kind of strange to me that the Norton installed on thier could let all these Viruses and Spyware slip by, which his AVG found...is this common?
Which brings to my question, is AVG that much better than Norton....or dod he simply make a "fast buck", claiming all these Viruses and Spyware? It should be noted that I kept that PC quite clean, regularly running Clean Sweep, Defrag and Norton Scans (Norton ever only found the odd Adware and removed it).
The specs for that Rig are:
CPU - P4 @ 3.2 (never OC'd)
Memory 4 x 500MB Kingston (cannot recall the Speed etc)
GPU - Evga 6800GT
PSU - Enermax 475W
MOBO - Gigabyte (cannot recall model)

Anyhow, I'm curious to whether or not I should be ditching my Norton and installing AVG.

Thanks for your time.:biggrin:

Do it big time, ditch Norton, kill it with fire and nuke it from orbit. AVG would work better for ya ;)

yeah nortons a resource hog i find.
avg much easier on sys.
its what i use with adaware and malwarebytes then imunize with spybot
and have not had virus in long time :)

+1 for AVG

AVG is much better than Norton...BUT, Nod32 is much better than AVG. ;)

Oh yea.. ^^ Nod32 eh.. ?

I would use neither - Actually I did use both before, and then everybody kept telling me how Norton is really bad - until a point where I decided to try something else and see what I was missing. Norton is a resource hog, it is slow too even on the latest system. I've been doing a bit of research on avcomparative and virus bulletins looking for software that have the 100% certification, meaning that they detect 100% of the IN THE WILD, known viruses and came across something called AVIRA - I now use AVIRA Security Suite, has firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware/trojan, etc, all in one - I was surprised how much better it is to Norton and how fast it is to access its control panel. You can get a FREE 3 months, FULL, non crippled license to try it out and it is well worth the price - it has very high marks on avcomparative and has very frequent updates, sometimes more than once daily - For spyware, I use Spyware Doctor - I recommend Spyware Doctor, AdAware 2008 and SpySweeper, sometimes you have to use more than one to remove what others have not completly done.

But AVIRA, I definately recommend over Norton & AVG. AVG misses on a lot of trojans, malware, etc, that AVIRA picks up. Also even Norton picks up more than AVG.

Yup, I run both on my systems (and clamwin...and kasper...and sometimes a couple others. What can I say I have interesting friends w/ interesting ideas of "funny") and the Nod is the best.

Up until recently AVG's malware was a separate program, thus its AV prog sucked @ malware :)~
I'm leery of these 100% in the wild claims, I've seen a couple of these for dif programs and IMHO nothing catches everything. Any site that tells you differently is trying to sell you something. (Nothing against Avira, Darkstar just never used it. Sooo I may be wrong, and I'm not taking a cheap shot at your either! )

Ive used AVG before. Every time ive gotten alg apyware that even nuking parts of it in the registry wont kill it. Generally, what happens is htat I get all kinds of viruses. Solution? Load basic norton AV. Use windows firewall. Todays machines are so fast, that norton cant slow it down.