Good alternative firewall and antivvirus to norton?

[Simo]

My Norton antivirus and firewall subscription are about to finish and this year I was thinking of maybe looking if there is a better solution.

Could anyone advise of a good combination of firewall and antivirus (paid or free, doesnt matter...just what is best and works).

Also if possible please advise why you think it would be better (less system overhead, better protection etc) as I see to many who just hate Norton but have no other reason other than they hate norton and If norton honestly is the best I will stick with it, but I dont know.

Any advice??

 

[Turner]

There's always ZoneAlarm. I don't use in anymore, I have a hardware firewall. Buy a router, cost you about $50 american. A decent one will have a NAT firewall on it.

For Antivirus, there's AVG and Avast! I use Avast! at home. You can go to Snapfiles and look in their freeware section. They have one for anti-virus and one for security. You can also search there, so just search freeware for 'Firewall'.

 

[Simo]

Would these freeware alternatives though be as effective and constantly up to date as those you pay for?? I imagine those running it for nothing must not be able to keep up with constant virus threats like someone getting paid for it?

 

[Turner]

A lot of people do just fine with ZoneAlarm. And technically you do pay for a NAT firewall, when you buy the router. Just make sure if you go that route that it says it has a hardware firewall.

I've never had any problems with Avast! There's a thread here in CompTalk, not too old, where someone said they had better luck with the free virus programs than Norton.

I've been using free firewall/virus protection for years, along with IE, and have had no problems. Of course, YMMV. I'm sure we don't do the same exact things on the puter...

 

[warmwaffles]

I just use AVG Free...cuz its easy and if I have a suspicion about a file I just right click to ensure my judgement...cuz I have only had to reformat once because of a virus because I installed a program without even thinking...*doh*

 

[classical_hero]

For an antivirus you could try Vet from CA.

 

[Sims2789]

AVG is a very good program. I have AVG Free, which doesn't have a firewall, but if you pay you can get it. It's better than Norton, updates more, and is cheaper!

 

[Wilhelm Kaleva]

I've been using F-Secure Antivirus for 10 years now and it has proved to be very reliable.

 

[Scratcher]

I have been using AVG free for more than one year. It can be updated almost daily and untill recently I never had a single virus. The one virus I did get, AVG picked it up very quickly, and I was able to sort the problem with no lasting problems.

As others have said it doesn't have a fire wall, but I would recommend this product.

 

[Rheinmetall]

I used to have Zonealarm/FreeAV combo but got tired of the constant maintenance they needed.

Been using F-Secure Internet Security ever since. After you install & configure it you don't need to pay much attention to it.

http://www.f-secure.com/home_user/products_a-z/fsis2006.html

 

[stwils]

Try Avast free home version. I have it and it is good.

Also I have the free version of Zone Alarm.

Also have Spy Sweeper which costs about $29 a year.

If you have Windows 98, be careful and download only those versions compatible with 98. Norton no longer supports Win 98.

If you have Windows XP, I hear Norton 2006 drains your resources dry!

stwils

 

[Ghost]

Iuse Avastantivirus. Workseven better then Norton

 

[Simo]

I ended up with Bitdefender 9 for antivirus and zone alarm (free version) for the firewall which is used in conjucntion with a router.

I have to say, I dont know the official stats but things actually runs worse than when I had norton taking control of antivirus and firewall. After everything I heard bad about norton i always expected to notice a change but it is worse.

I suffer from that annoying slow right click problem, when I right click on a file to bring up the options box (cut, paste, properties etc) it can take anywhere from 10-30 seconds for the window to show. Also double clicking on a media file to load it now has about a 10 sec pause before anything happens as well as when I click the internet button and outlook express buttons they no longer start immediately there is a delay.

Sometimes activity shows on the bit defender file zone, sometimes not so I dont know if it is a scan ttaking the time or if it has just made an already annoying problem on my PC worse somehow.

So even though my new combo of bitdefender and zone alarm are working well in that I havent had any virus/hack problems my system performance has taken a big negative hit ( i never had any virus or security issues running norton either for the 3 years i had it).

 

[jimbob27]

NOD32 is pretty much the best antivirus program out there. It detects stuff that norton wouldn't have a hope in hell of finding, and doesn't drain your resources as much.