16-08-2024, 02:31 PM
The original problem at the beginning of this thread started after a Thunderbird update and resolved when a Windows update came through. So although I was open to suspecting Norton being the problem, I have no real evidence that it was.
Being annoyed with Norton for other reasons I looked into what I need since the Norton renewal was due this week. I've spent many hours looking at reviews, labtest results and customer feedback. I shortlisted Norton, Bitdefender, ESET and TotalAV which ended up in that order in my final decision - ie I stayed with Norton.
Norton has a lot of critics for their customer service (and I agree with that criticism) but at the end of the day seems to be the best product for the task. Overall, when comparing Norton and ESET it appears that Norton has better malware protection and web security. ESET has better diagnostics tools. Advanced users who do their own troubleshooting are recommended to go with ESET. ESET goes deeper into the computer to look for malware but Norton is better at stopping it at the gate.
I will also continue to run free Malwarebytes over the system from time to time. Having this combination of Norton for ongoing AV and using Malwarebytes in this way as a double check has worked well for 5 years and to my knowledge nothing has got through on the computer. So at the end of the day, why fix something that isn't broken when making changes mean setting up and learning something new that may not be as effective? Assuming that the recent problem was both caused and resolved by the timing of other product updates.
It was also interesting to look into the companies that provide the products. Norton's parent company is a very large Fortune 500 company that also owns Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and Ccleaner and evolved from Symantic. ESET is a private company that just does AV and is at the forefront of research so is clearly also expert in the field. Definitely one to keep watching for next time.
Being annoyed with Norton for other reasons I looked into what I need since the Norton renewal was due this week. I've spent many hours looking at reviews, labtest results and customer feedback. I shortlisted Norton, Bitdefender, ESET and TotalAV which ended up in that order in my final decision - ie I stayed with Norton.
Norton has a lot of critics for their customer service (and I agree with that criticism) but at the end of the day seems to be the best product for the task. Overall, when comparing Norton and ESET it appears that Norton has better malware protection and web security. ESET has better diagnostics tools. Advanced users who do their own troubleshooting are recommended to go with ESET. ESET goes deeper into the computer to look for malware but Norton is better at stopping it at the gate.
I will also continue to run free Malwarebytes over the system from time to time. Having this combination of Norton for ongoing AV and using Malwarebytes in this way as a double check has worked well for 5 years and to my knowledge nothing has got through on the computer. So at the end of the day, why fix something that isn't broken when making changes mean setting up and learning something new that may not be as effective? Assuming that the recent problem was both caused and resolved by the timing of other product updates.
It was also interesting to look into the companies that provide the products. Norton's parent company is a very large Fortune 500 company that also owns Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and Ccleaner and evolved from Symantic. ESET is a private company that just does AV and is at the forefront of research so is clearly also expert in the field. Definitely one to keep watching for next time.