Quote Originally Posted by Samuraid
I disagree, at least with respect to the virus scanner. Although, most of the rest of the Internet Security suite is trash.
I believe that scanning for viruses is not the correct approach to the problem. It's like being OK with the fact that your boat has a hundred holes in it, so long as you have a really nice bucket to continually bail out the water just fast enough so you don't sink.

I can't help but think that if every file that passes through your system is scanned by Norton, you're looking at a massive decrease in performance. Basically looking at every file twice; once when Norton scans it, once when you do something with it. Even with a good heuristic in place so that most things are skipped, it's certainly going to slow a lot of everything down. If it stopped 100% of viruses, then I might think it was worth it, but it doesn't. It's limited in that regard by its very nature.

It can't stop a virus until it recognizes it; by then it's often too late. Before then it can just make an educated guess whether something is a virus or not. The false positives are annoying. I recall the old "Be sure to disable any anti-virus programs before installing this program" from legitimate programs I wanted to use or install. Not worth the hassle. I've also never experienced anything but problems with the other parts (firewall, etc.).

That and the fact that you must re-buy the program every year when your subscription runs out, or else it's all but worthless.