Anti-Virus

[nheather]

I'm rebuilding my machine and am wondering whether to put Norton Internet Security back on.

I have a newly licenced copy of NIS 2006 (about 11 months left on it) but I found that it slowed the start-up of my old build so much I'm considering ditching it.

The other issue is that now my family have 4 PCs - mine, my wife's and son's and my daughter's.

At the moment both my and my wife's machines have current NIS licences available - my children's machines are unprotected apart from the router firewall and MS Defender.

I'm considering two options:-

NOD32
AVAST

I understand NOD32 is regarded as the better of the two but would like to check about licencing. I have 4 PCs sat in a workgroup behind a router/switch so I assume that I would need 4 licences - is this correct? If so then the cost of those plus the already commited cost of NIS makes the deal quite expensive.

The alternative, AVAST, I understand is 'free' for the home edition. How does AVAST compare with the likes of NOD32 and Norton.

Also, I've no worries over Norton's capability it's just the load that it places on my computer especially at start up. Would you expect NOD32 or AVAST to improve upon this?


Cheers,

Nigel

 

[Kona*]

I use Avast because I get a free license from work - it is alright, I have had a few false positives and it is a bit of a system hog (nothing like Norton, but far from being as slim as NOD32!)

I am going to save a little extra cash out of my wages next month and get NOD32 again, had it ages ago on my laptop and it was brill.

 

[mrk]

AVAST can be as slim as nod32 if you disable many of the unnecesary services from the initial general control panel and use *** simple interface instead of skinned interface. I only have the resident shield active as I have absolutely no need for any of the others, I doubt many others do either.