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 Norton AntiVirus/Security Suite May Hurt System Performance
Posted by: Admin - 2007-07-14 13:43:13
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 Norton/Symantec is not a bad company. They are a reputable company. Their products are not bad either, however their software engineering/design approach is no longer the most elegant, especially with regard to their security products. Strictly in the realm of capability to detect viruses and other forms of malware, they are pretty darned good. Their firewall and the other elements of their suite can be describe in one word...garbage.
Where they have gone wrong with their AV, in my opinion, is in three areas: the "horsepower" it takes to run their applications--the resources consumed, the zeal with which they "protect" their processes running on your system, and thier pricing model. The first "problem" borders on the ridiculous, though Norton is not nearly as bad as McAfee in this regard. I've seen McAffee's suite bring perfectly good and clean machines to their knees. Flatly stated, Norton consumes too much CPU power and installs and runs too many processes. It's just not efficient.
The second "problem" is somewhat more understandable from a design standpoint, and requires that you consider their rationale for what the program designer really meant to do. Norton security programs, their AV in particular, protect themselves from modification or termination. That's understandable--you wouldn't want a trojan/worm/virus to be able to easily shut your AV off or break it. This aspect can also be a real pain the the backside when you are trying to work on your system and you can't just terminate stuff easily like you think you should. It's a balancing act, and Norton has consistently chosen to throw the design balance toward being rigid and difficult to administer at times. Still, I understand the intent. Here's the part I don't understand, and I think it's bad engineering design driven by a way too powerful marketing department: there is no uninstaller, the uninstallation sequence is not clear or intuitive, and there's almost always garbage left behind that continues to run and consume valuable resources. When you have to check a vendor's website for help uninstalling their product, that's just bad design period. And there can only be one reason for it--marketing. They don't want you to uninstall it, so they make it as difficult as possible.
Finally, there's the cost issue and their business/subscription model. Reducing this aspect to very simple terms is easy--Norton is over priced.
So even though Norton AV is very good at protection, detection, and removal I will never use it again and now never recommend it for the reasons explained above.
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=43361
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