Death to Norton Antivirus

The Microsoft Anti-virus products are lighter weight, in regard to system load, than the heavy hitters like Norton and McAfee.  As Mike suggested - give it a try.  It is the next generation after Live OneCare, which I have been using happily for a couple years.

Yes there are many better options the best thing to do would be to go onto Cnet.com and look it up, this will give him a wide range, some of them are free.

Malwarebytes is a free one which will let you scan when you choose for virus or you can pay $19 i believe to have it be a full real time system.

Hi TIMFOX123,

I have used the following:
McAfee
Kaspersky
avast!
AVIRA
AVG
BitDefender
Norton

It's really preference on which antivirus you decide to use. For a paid subscription, I would take a look at Kaspersky, avast! or AVIRA. For a free one, I would use AVG.

If this Doctor friend of yours is a home user he can use AVG Free or Avast Free antivirus software.  Both quite good and Avast has the added bonus of a boot-time DOS-Based scan, which can help with those nasty sort of problems.

http://free.avg.com/gb-en/homepage

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Keep in mind (I assume this is for a business) that many of these free AV's (AVG Free/Microsoft Security Essentials) are for personal home use only. A good free product that I have used that is legal in business environments is Comodo AV
http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/antivirus.php
http://forums.comodo.com/empty-t25586.0.html.

Eset Nod 32
http://www.eset.com/

Their trial version link
http://www.eset.com/download/free_trial_download_int.php

if hes paying $60.00 per computer he's getting ripped off by someone.
Nortons Antivirus subscriptions should be  per year like $25.00.
Now if he gets the full blown nortons system works.. yeah thats 60.00 but it's completely unnecessary if you just want antivirus.

I have used and seen
McAfee  /  Kaspersky    /  avast!  /  AVG  /  BitDefender  /  Norton home or 360  /  One care
Nortons corperate   /  Sophos  /  Trend micro  /  webroot  /  CA Antivirus  /  Pc tools  /  Spyware doctor.

For free.. use the AVG
for pay... i would recommend Nortons Antivirus.  updates should be 25.00 per year, the software is like 29.00 total.

other thoughts, i would NEVER use pc tools or spyware doctor.. both are crap and I have had huge problems with.
webroot and mcafee are nice but both use quite a bit of memory and overhead to run.
CA antivirus is free from road runner if he has that internet.
Kaspersky's antivirus is ok.. but on their Internet security.. the firewall will drive him crazy

Now days, i see 90% spyware, and 10% viruses.
if you want the best lowest cost combo
get free AVG, and buy Superantispyware with a lifetime subscription.
or
get free AVG wth Malwarebytes and a subscription.

symatec endpoint protection has a one time fee and a tiny footprint on the client computers.  You also get a client manager and remote install/rollout options

Symantec would debate that Symantec Endpoint Protection is a one time fee.

dauman you are more than likely correct but my clients have had SEP for 2-3 years and never have had to purchase renewal licensing and still have regular updates

that is true, but if you talk to symantec  they will tell you directly that they provide the product and the client is to renew it yearly under a "gentleman's agreement"

who knows why they choose to market it that way when the home use products are forced yearly renewals.

SEP is an annually licensed product - if you don't pay for it annually, you are not licensed correctly.

When Symantec brought it out - they neglected to make it enforce the license agreement, but that does not mean it is a one-time fee based product, thus your client is not legally using the software.

Alan

(Symantec Reseller)

I have run avast! and Superantispyware for quite some time now. Togather, they have covered everything I have come across. I use the free version of avast and the pro version of superantispyware. The pro version of Superantiospyware allows installation of the license on 2 systems. It also gives you the option of purchasing a one-time lifetime subscription which is less tha you were paying per year.

Some benefits of the two. Full real-time protection
Auto updates of both virus definitions and software.
Scheduled scanning of Superantispyware (Avast pro needed for scheduled scanning. I let the antispyware scan each night at 2 a.m.. If it encounters something, it automatically trips the avast to detect and auto clean if desired.)

Best thing about them both: VERY LOW footprint and system resources. Does not slow system down. Also, avast has my favorite feature, which is that during non-use of the PC (typically when the screen saver is running), it automatically creates backups of windows critical files. If a file gets infected and cannot be cleaned, it will delete the offending file and replace it with the backup.

Anyway, my 2 cents... I love the combo working together and have it all running on every system.

I am sorry I have got to chip in after spending the last week and a half trouble shooting an Avast! installation (not sold by me I might add) and having been in touch with Avast! technical Support only to be told I had to rebuild an SBS server if I wanted to get it to work, see my question here: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Virus_and_Spyware/Anti-Virus/Server_Anti-Virus/Q_24815811.html

I would definately not recommend Avast!

I can recommend ESET NOD32 as a good reliable product with a low footprint.

I don't think this question has anything to do with a server issue. Unless I am mistaken, it has to do with coverage of several individual units. Perhaps I am wrong. I can't speak to a server version, but I can recommend avast 100% as far as ease of installation, use, effectiveness, low profile, updates, etc. I have placed it on well over 50 machines and not a single one has experienced any issues.

When I was investigating this issue there was a number of other issues around desktop installations all with similar experiences.

I have installed NOD32 on well over 400 computers/servers and don't have a single issue with it.

You may also want to have a look at the interesting comment here: http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Q_24834212.html#a25634011