Phoenix Network Forums

Isn't norton super resource hogging?

Yeah norton is using very much of computer resources.. :-/

The best Antivirus scanner I have found is Avast! Antivirus. You can download it for free at http://www.avast.com/ . It works well, scans deeply, and even scans memory. Works much better then my old Norton AV.

For firewall I am using Norton Firewall. It's alright I guess, I mostly use it to make sure spyware isn't leeching my internet

Linux & iptables > *

:p

i useing nod32 antivirus :) and i like very much , its use very little from computer resourses. i don't have firewall software now.

I don't have any firewall, I think that firewall software isn't a good thing. I think that the best firewall is a hardware firewall (ie. router). I got a router and it's good. But I don't realy need a firewall, because my ISP is doing all the hard work which blocks me from hosting anything. About anti-virus, I don't realy know which one is good, because most of them just got killed on my PC. In my opinanion AVG isn't a good anti-virus, I preffer to be without one then with this one. Also, I guess Avast can be ok...

At work i use Norton AV & Zone Alarm (according to my company's tests ZA is supposed to be one of the most bullet-proof personal firewalls, so thats why it's usage has become part of a 'corporate policy'. And did you know, that Norton's AV engine was actually developed by ibm and afterwards sold to symantec?). At home i use Trend Micro for both - its simple, doesn't use much resources - combined with iptables on a linux router (can't be too careful, right?). Anyway i disagree with bug on the firewall matter. HW stuff only protects your net from outside attacks, while you're still open to internal threats such as, currently very popular worms (and they can cause a lot of trouble on your net - mass icmp probes, mass emailing to outside addresses etc. which avove all exposes your network to outside world as a badly managed one), personal data thefts etc. and eventually your pc/notebook can become inoperative. Even win firewall is better than no firewall at all.

Try Linux... best antiviral move a person can make! Oh, and it comes with all you need for a firewall also!

I respect phetus' opinion, BUT...
I've been using RAV for some years now and never had any trouble. It's fast,easy and reliable. That's why it's called RELIABLE ANTIVIRUS. It's produced by some romanian company (GeCAD) but don't worry, romanians can code. And well too
Regarding the firewall issue, i don't use anything like that. I'm connected to a network and "protected" by the server.
Peace

I'm using Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal and Outpost Firewall 2.5

mcafee..

but if you want to save resource, you can use small apps like sniffer that checks your inbound and outbound trafic,.. as firewall

and for your virus scanner, you can use a tool..i forgot the name but the concept is, whenever you want to insatll something you pass it on to this app (its less than 1 MB i think) and it will automatically take note of the system changes in your computer so whenever somthing bad happens you can just click and go back to the previous system before the insatlation occured.

although this appraoch aint much (i use it in my old 95 model laptop for windows 95, 1gig HDD and 32MB RAM) and requires a much high level of skill than the average home user but saves a lot of resources.

but i think thats what this softwarecompanies are trying to do..they provide userfirendly app, integrated tools, 24/hour support. updates, etc making it huge and resource problem..

I've tried McAffee and i didn't like it. It was very buggy.
And as far as i'm concerned, Norton is the most resource-hungry.

ZoneAlarm is not a free fw software, but it is good, and one IMPORTANT thing: ALWAYS use at least 2 firewalls! why? if one of them is exploitable to one thing, the other one is certainly not, because those have been written by different folks, so if the attacker passes the first firewall he wont pass the another one (hopefully)

also important thing is to BE CAREFUL with your browsers! they are in 99% of attacks, the thing being exploited, because you will always give the permission to your web browser to the internet, right?

so, final conclusion is: 2 firewalls + hijackthis

(hijackthis is a software to clean up start up sections of windows, and to clean the browser off of those spyware, malware, adware, etc..)

try Tiny Personal Firewall (if you can find it cause it has upgraded to the commercial version)

Two firewalls ?...
I'll use two antiviruses so if one of them doesn't recognize a virus, the other one sure will. That would be ... stupid, because they'll interfeer with each other and God knows what will happen.

Sonny boy, I'm doing those kind of things professionally for money, so please don't say that something is stupid, only because YOU don't understand it..

there is something called Google.. so please next time before posting stupid post, please ask mr. Google, ok?