I have heard that Norton is resource intensive (RAM, storage). Would like to hear from folks who have +/- experiences or expertise. Thanks
Why would I want to buy spyware for my devices?
I’m a cybersecurity analyst in my day job and I haven’t used Norton or McAfee etc. for decades. If you want good performance, reliable detection with low false positive and false negative rates, I personally like Eset as a general rule. They’ve been regularly at or near the top for many years and are known to tune their scanning engine for low resource use and have done so since at least the mid-2000s.
I have also liked Kaspersky in the past but they typically haven’t been as resource friendly, and if you do anything with the US government, they no longer allow its use on anything that connects to their systems due to it being a Russian company. That said, if you’re comfortable with that, the Russians do know their technology pretty well and it was always a quality product prior to the government banning it from its systems.
For next gen Anti-virus, Cylance has a consumer offering, but I find it has a lot of flagging of anti-piracy and anti-cheat systems in video games that you have to sort out yourself and decide whether you’d rather be exposed to the risks or not play games that use those systems because they often get flagged every update or two.
I also used Panda for a few years and had good results, but theirs was usually a little worse at detections and a bit higher resource usage (and was getting more resource intensive towards when I switched to Kaspersky and eventually to Eset).
Windows Defender actually does a competent job these days, too, if you’re not a targeted demographic. But it does have the disadvantage of being built into Windows, so it’s going to be the very first product a hacker is going to aim at disabling or bypassing, so I wouldn’t rely on only that if protection is really important to you.
But don’t take that as an endorsement - every person in security will have a different opinion based on different factors. I can only say that in terms of performance and reliability and resource consumption, Eset does an excellent job compared to nearly everything I’ve used or been saddled with.
Wow! Very timely – I keep getting junk mail messages that my spyware is expiring in 24 hours.
I haven’t used a third party antivirus for windows in years.
No issues. Maybe I’m not doing as risky browsing/downloading these days…
I can’t recommend against this deal strongly enough. I manage thousands of PCs. Norton is complete garbage. Save your $20 and the headaches Norton will bring.
The built in antivirus in Windows is just fine.
This won’t help that at all. Save your money.
Cylance is now Blackbery. And we know how great they are at pumpng out those Android phones that everyone is using.
My laptop came with this running on it. Doesnt seem to slow it down however there are a lot of false positives.
Recently when it got a false positive it deleted my app without giving me the option of gnoring Norton! There wa nothing wrong with the app and I had to re=install it.
Who the hell is buying this crap off woot. The only way Norton and McAfee still make money is fooling old people by bundling it. I’m looking at you Adobe reader!
My worst complaint with Norton is they want you to sign up for Lifelock. So many of their better features require paying for a subscription to Lifelock, and they advertise the h"!! out of it. I get at least a pop up twice a day for something that requires you buy into It.
On the positive, I remember the days years ago when Norton was a resource pig, but not so much any more. No noticeable slow down at all. Really liked Kaspersky but yes the Government banned it so it became a no go. I agree Windows Defender is good, but it’s a hacker target for sure. That’s my 2 cents.
Did Amazon call you to let you know your iPhone 16 is on is way too? 
Kind of like those mystery PCs that they sell for real cheap that they won’t even let you comment on anymore.