Antivirus Recommendations: Symantec vs Kaspersky or Other?

[vizitor]

Rule no. 1: stay away from Symantec products (i.e. Norton)...

I've seen more systems really messed up by Symantec/Norton products... When it works, yeah it does it's job. When it goes awry, good luck getting your system back up - and good luck getting all its tentacles out of your system if you try to remove/uninstall it. That's just MHO from experience.
I generally recommend (and use on all our systems here - for a couple years now) Avast! Home (Free). It's never caused or allowed a problem here.

[robegusn]

I am not sure if anyone here has heard of eScan Antivirus, but it is based on Kaspersky and it is an elegant clean product.

The newest version includes spyware protection and I have been using the product for the past 3 years without any viruses, head-aches, performance problems, licensing/activation concerns or performance issues.

[sapibobo]

I installed Norton Internet Security 2007 for Windows Vista at my Z61m. At first i am abit sceptical about Norton considering my past experience with Norton Antivirus 2005 and XP.

The installation is simple and fast. The program is quite slim, the installer only 50 MB. It occupies only 43 MB in your harddrive. The CD does not include Vista version, only XP. You have to download for the Vista version. After you put your key code and activate, everyhting works flawlessly.

To my surprise, this NIS 2007 definitely not a resource hog. At least i cannot felt it in my 2 GB system. I launch Outlook 2007, Firefox 2.0 and Media Player without any slowdown. Switching between windows is as fast as hell. Totally different experience than previous Norton Antivirus 2005 and Windows XP.

NIS includes not only Norton Antivirus 2007 but also many features and firewall that lets you blocks online identity theft, detects and eliminates spyware, removes viruses and Internet worms, protects against hackers, rootkit, etc. Some might think some of the features is unnecessary, but to me as long as it is not slowing down my system its OK.
Note : you have to choose between Norton Firewall included in the package or using Windows Defender. I think it is safe just run only ONE firewall. NIS will ask you to choose, very nice.

I like they way NIS works inobtrusively in the background. I think they have re-written the code so it is more resource-efficient and have more comprehensive protection feature. For all my experiences with Norton, this is their best release ever.

My system is Z61m Core Duo 2GHz with 2 GB RAM.