Norton? No thanks.

Well there's not point in having this blog if I don't use it to tell you how I feel about things, so here goes.

DO NOT BUY NORTON SECURITY PRODUCTS

They suck. I bought Norton Internet Security 2004 about a year ago, and installed it on my old computer. It worked, kind of. But it slowed everything down so much that I figured after a while that it was more hassle than it was worth. So I uninstalled it, and instead used the free Sygate personal firewall instead - and employed my native cunning and guile to steer clear of viruses (it's not all that difficult really - if you get an email from your boss that says something like "Fre brittany spears scrensvr" it's probably best not to click on the .vbs attachment).

A couple of weeks ago I had to buy a new computer. I was about to reinstall Sygate when I remembered the copy of Norton gathering dust in my drawer.

I decided to give it another go, and installed it. Because the new computer is a lot more powerful than the old one, it all worked just fine. Except for one thing: it kept making my system hang. A lot.

Like every time it detected an intrusion attempts. Like every time I tried to install anything. Like every time you started the computer up.

I tried, believe me. I followed the instructions for a clean uninstall from the Symantec website. This was fine - but when I tried reinstalling again to give it one last chance, it wouldn't install at all - and it killed my network connection into the bargain. It took an hour, but eventually I managed to get Norton off my system.

So I installed the free Sygate personal firewall and the free AVG antivirus programmes. Unlike Norton, nobody seems to have a bad word to say for either of them. They don't have all the bells and whistles that Norton does, but they don't hog all your RAM or make your system crash, either. And best of all, they don't cost £40, either.

How does Symantec get away with selling such utter crap, I wonder? And how does it justify $30 a call to the support team to solve the problems caused by its crappy software?