NOD32 should be on the list

I agree with some of the other posters - NOD32 takes far less from the system than does Norton.

Since switching from Norton and its constant scanning and making my computers grind to a standstill, I have not looked back.

Doing some research at the time NOD32 seemed to get the best overall reviews - so it was a no-brainer really. Sure there are free AV software packages but this is one area where it is probably worth spending the bucks to have someone constantly on the case!

Eset (the makers of NOD32) have just realeased a new version. They have changed some of their "quirky" menus - they have made it look more like the sort of thing that Norton users expect. They have also included a full protection suite with spyware and personal firewall.

Having just downgraded a Vista pc to XP I needed to install an AV package as the raw XP install doesn't have it. NOD32 was my obivious choice as I already had a multi machine 2 year licence for it.

The fact that Norton is pre-installed on most new PCs is a master stroke of marketing - Symantec certainly don't make it easy to un-install.
Initial setup of a Vista pc with Norton on the preload package (especially on a notebook that you picked up for $399.99 [Vista Basic and 512M RAM]) - is particularly painfull. Norton and Windows are constantly fighting in their efforts to update themselves. Norton sometimes finishes first and wants to re-boot. This is often in the middle of Windows downloading updates! How is the novice user expected to know NOT to reoot at this time and let Windows Vista finish downloading updates and install them?

It is little wonder that Vista gets a bad rap when Norton (possibly) screws up the initial installation? The last PC that I configured had over 30 updates to Vista (we must be getting close to SP1 - the new year I hear). Not letting Vista fully update itself (or worse allowing Norton to interrupt it) is crucial to obtaining its potential performance. The painful setup of a new pc with Norton and Windows updates is so slow - even on computers with fast processors and lots of RAM - is the first thing that most users experience. No wonder they want to downgrade to XP!