mcafee versus norton

[Barnzzz]

Hi everyone. I got free Norton from BT, but they have now switched to McAfee which was installed today. Since Norton went and McAfee arrived, my computer seems much quicker.

Do you think this is my imagination or does McAfee use less stuff ? ('stuff' being the only sort of technical term I can use)

Sue

[MarkJ]

Quite likely that your observation is correct Sue

Norton/Symantec is well known as a bit of a resource hog in tech circles. Interesting that BT have switched to McAfee - wonder if they too decided that Norton was a bit too bloated?

Mark

[Peter Goodey]

Perhaps Norton was getting in the way of Phorm

[MarkJ]

Perhaps Norton was getting in the way of Phorm

Naughty naughty Peter

I must admit that it did cross my mind too

Mark

[Barnzzz]

Oooh a conspiracy theory, I like it ! BT downloaded McAfee remotely for me, does that make it more mysterious ?

[MarkJ]

If you want to play the "conspiracy theory" game, then have a look at the official release from McAfee
At the end, it gives 3 contact names, one is a McAfee bod, the second is some sort of publicity person and the third is the BT contact. The first two have email addresses which relate to their companies, whilst the third - a huge UK ISP - uses a yahoo address!

Now all we need to do is link Yahoo to Kent Ertugrul....

Mark

[Divad]

I heard that McAfee and Norton were one and the same company. Both names are related to on the box when you buy the program. For myself I use Norton and their latest version is the quickest I have had from them. All that means is that your McAfee must be very quick.

[MarkJ]

Different companies Divad.
Norton was a company called Peter Norton Computing, which was bought out by Symantec in 1990. They retained the piccy of Peter Norton on their AV program for many years (they may still do - but I haven't checked to be honest for ages).

McAfee started around the same sort of time (the late 1980's), but they are not connected with Symantec as far as I am aware.

The speed of Norton/Symantec anti virus is reasonable enough, but over the years more and more "enhancements" were added - each requiring more RAM.

When it comes to AV programs on Windows machines, the best one is always a matter of great debate
The simple answer to which is the best is "the one which you can understand and will keep updated".
An AV program which is using outdated virus definitions is worse than useless - hence my comment above

Mark