...the darn thing actually worked!

I've just de-infected a NewMediaCodecInstaller trojan from a friends PC using ONLY security forums, blogs and free software. (thank you HijackThis!)

Norton wouldquite happily scan everytime and have you think your pc was fine despite your desktop being flooded with browser windows and and invitations to other installers being sent out.

Most of their sales must come from the fact that they get bundled with new pc's so the unitiated think they are actually getting some protection from the offset. How many of those sales are from resubscriptions I wonder after everyone moves to AVG or somesuch during their first year of ownership?

They should try putting some effort back in to what used to be a respectable name.

Yet again it proved that great marketing can sell crap products. Norton's Internet Security Suite is by far one of the worst on the market, slow as hell and not even that effective at protecting a PC, but by pumping millions into advertising (plus the ones from PCWorld), it can increase sales like no others.

I just repaired a virus infected notebook, dual core with 1GB of memory on XP, slow as hell even after removing all virus and spywares, so I decided to remove Norton 360, it refused, on the third attempt it removed at last, restart the notebook, and the difference in speed is like chalk and cheese, it loads XP fast as it should, and everything else just flys. Its not the first case of removing Norton (or sometime Mcafee) that speeds up a computer, I wouldnt mind so much if the decrease of speed actually help the PC by providing maximum protection, but it cant even do that,