norton 2004 is having similar issues on some systems.

I agree with you, however.

 

AV programs eat up system resources.  By their nature they look at (almost) every file that comes into or out of (subject to your settings) your system.  A medium complexity web site can have a great number of files associated with it.  I have found that the CA Antivirus "eTrust EZ Antivirus" uses less resources than Norton.  That however is just my experience.  CA updates virus definitions daily.  Norton less frequently.  The daily update can be a pain, but it sure makes you think about anti-virus issues - which is not necessarily a bad thing.  I think the cost is about $40 and $10 per subsequent year.  Just my 2 cents.

Billybob

Message Edited by billybobsand on 11-13-2003 04:05 PM

I found it absurd that we pay big bucks for a slight improve in performance, while the antivirus programs has a much greater negative impact on the performance. If you are not too paranoid about viruses, than I recommend disabling "virus scan online" or "auto protect" and instead run a virus scan automatically every night.

AVG from http://www.grisoft.com seems to be less resource hungry & is free for the individual user.

Don't mistake the issues you are having with the anti-virus program as issues with your new laptop.  Norton 2004 client has some HORRENDOUS issues with it.  My boot times went up to 30 minutes when I loaded it.  i finally took it out and things are back to an acceptable time frame.

The suggestion to disable autoprotect and scan at boot up are good ones as long as you run a full system scan either before you start using it or after your through.  You can blame windows and the other programs you have for the lenght of time that these scans are taking.  remember the days when Windows used less than a few hundred files?  Well no more, windows had thousands of files and it loads many of them by default when they are not needed, makes doing a boot-up scan next to impossible.  I have not checked the Norton site to see if they have a fix for their issue yet but they are aware of the problem and are working on a solution.  Their support site is horrid because they acknowledge the issue and then don't provide you with a fix or a work-around.

I would suggest you check the Macafee site to see if they are aware of a similar issue with their client

cheers, RDJ

Although by no means a conclusive tests, NAV and McAfee nonetheless continue to lead the pack in slowing down a computer.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1372113,00.asp

Too bad they didn't test AVG Free.

Norton Internet Security has been effectively protecting ALL my computers for the past few years. I run auto protect on all of them with no performance issues. If you do NOT install the software correctly, OR install it over a previous version, etc etc you can run into issues. I found it best to do a clean install of the O/S, and install the anti-virus RIGHT AWAY, along with all the windows updates.

That's what has worked for me. If I DO play an intense 3D game I disable auto-protect using the desktop icon in less than 2 seconds, just to ensure maximum performance. In everyday use this thing flies like it should being a 2.8ghz system.

The constant complaints about Norton are unfounded in most cases, but as for Mcafee there may be some truth to the failure/compatibility/performance issues.

I for one would reccommend Norton to ANYONE who wants a solid Anti-Virus or Firewall.

Those benchmarks talks about few percent degradation. I am talking about few HUNDRED precent degredation. My Inspiron 5100 with 2.4G and 512MB, out of the box, took about 10 seconds to start IE (the first time after reboot, since the following invocations are from memory). However with the virus scan online disabled, it took only couple of seconds (after a fresh restart).  I am talking about the time it takes IE to start, not to load a page (which is of course depend on the connection). Did anyone else experienced such a big difference in performance with McCafee ?

 

From my experience, NAV (or NIS) does produce a noticeable performance hit. However, for all the latest and newest computers with ever faster devices, the performance hit is probably becoming a lesser and lesser issue, soon it maybe a <1% delta on benchmarks.

I also recommend NAV for others, provided that they are willing to pay for it. However, as in HK, in which 9 out of 10 softwares installed on home PCs are illegal (no it's by no mean a scienitifically-gathered stat.), I usually install AVG Free, while not as straight-forward as NAV, is still miles ahead than AntiVir, for its much more straight-forward auto-update program.

Guys (and Gals) please don't confuse the issues here.   Older versions of NAV do indeed work well and only affects performance only slightly.  NAV 2004 CLIENT bites the big one, big time, it is broken, Norton admits on their website that the performance hit taken by ramwanetz is real.  I experienced the same thing.  My suggestion is to rip NAV 2004 out completely and get an older version (2002 or 2003) and run with it until they fix 2004.

Cheers, RDJ
Dell I8500 No freezez and no dang NAV anymore
Working well in the sands of Kuwait