I Just Gave Up With Norton

After using Norton's Utilities back in the 1970's I followed it to the anti-virus software, Norton's Anti-Virus and so on. I switched to McAfee for one year since then and dropped them after that and back to Norton's. Each year I find some way to pay a much lower price they wanted for auto renewal and this year is no different since I just switched from Norton 360 something, I forget now, to Norton Deluxe. I think I've used most of their versions. I think next year I'll have my wife assume ownership then repeat the cycle as long as possible and as long as I live. I wonder why they can't just price their products and let us select what we can afford? It seems to me that is how businesses did it in the past. It's like they took up the hacker mentality.

Norton Utilities actually didn't exist until 1982 when the company was known as Peter Norton Computing. Symantec bought the company and everything just went downhill ever since.

jeffbeish said:

I wonder why they can't just price their products and let us select what we can afford? It seems to me that is how businesses did it in the past. It's like they took up the hacker mentality.

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I think the trick is NOT autorenewing software and looking for the best price close to subscription time. Sites like this one, have many deals for Nortons/Kaspersky etc. The fact it is an Australian website should make no difference as all the licenses are legitimate digital licences sent via email. Also, as a bonus, the conversion is currently:


I use kaspersky. One of the things I like about Kaspersky is that I can buy, for example, 4 separate keys, add them to the software and they will be used in succession as the prior license expires. Currently I believe I have a license for Antivirus/Firewall and VPN for the next 10 years for all my PC.s (according to the license’s I bought 1 year Protection for 5 devices) @ a cost all up of about AU$80. US$51.00 (due to a deal they had running on the site)


Here is a link to their Nortons Software product page. There are probably legitimate sites in the USA that offer the same price.
(I can assure you these are legitimate. I am in contact with Kaspersky customer support this year — as I bought Kaspersky subscriptions — due to VPN issues, they are responsive, polite and have no issue with my subscriptions.)

Almighty1 said:

Norton Utilities actually didn't exist until 1982 when the company was known as Peter Norton Computing. Symantec bought the company and everything just went downhill ever since.

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Hum, Peter started on land lines before 1982. Can't remember the exact utility but I think it was "Wash." It has been awhile, so much of the very first stuff was on noisy phone lines.

antspants said:

I think the trick is NOT autorenewing software and looking for the best price close to subscription time. Sites like this one, have many deals for Nortons/Kaspersky etc. The fact it is an Australian website should make no difference as all the licenses are legitimate digital licences sent via email. Also, as a bonus, the conversion is currently:

AUD	USD
1	0.6173

I use kaspersky. One of the things I like about Kaspersky is that I can but e.x. 4 seperate keys, add them to the siftware and they will be used in succession as the prior license expires. Currently I believe I have a license for Antivirus/Firewall and VPN for the next 10 years for all my PC.s (according to the license’s I bought 1 year Protection for 5 devices) @ a cost all up of about $80.


Here is a link to their Nortons Software product page. There are probably legitimate sites in the USA that offer the same price.
(I can assure you these are legitimate. I am in contact with Kaspersky customer support this year — as I bought Kaspersky subscriptions — due to VPN issues, they are responsive, polite and have no issue with my subscriptions.)

Buy Norton and Anti-Virus 's Product - SaveOnIT.com.au

We provide wide range of products in Norton and Anti-Virus 's Product at low rates. For enquires contact us at sales@saveonit.com.au. We would contact back you shortly.

www.saveonit.com.au

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You are right. Somehow I manage to get the price back to the low end. It seems like they come at us with "don't go away mad," or the like. Then chatting with some person they make a deal to renew me at a lower price. I usually threaten to buy it on Amazon. :) But, it seems like it is getting harder and harder to accomplish. WIsh I could remember the phrase they use.

My Microsoft Security (Defender) has none of these problems.

TraderGary said:

My Microsoft Security (Defender) has none of these problems.

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Some of us don’t trust Microsoft enough to put all our faith in MS Security/Defender. Well at least I don’t.

antspants said:

Some of us don’t trust Microsoft enough to put all our faith in MS Security/Defender. Well at least I don’t.

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And you put your faith in Kaspersky, headquartered in Moscow, Russia?

TraderGary said:

And you put your faith in Kaspersky, headquartered in Moscow, Russia?

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Yep.

My decisions are not made due to a softwares origins but on the software itself. I don’t generalise countries when referring to anything (that I am aware I have ever done, better identified as bigoted views) I also have read all the conspiracy and reports directed at Kaspersky, because it is “Russian” I can identify propaganda when I see it. If I am wrong, that’s on me. I take full responsibilities for my own actions.

I have always had good service with Norton's. I will stick to it somehow.

I haven't used a Norton product since.....I think Norton commander a bunch of years ago.

Used Norton Antivirus from 1998-til Mid 2005

Then Switched to Windows Live OneCare Beta as a Tester (severely infected my former AMD Athlon 2500+ based system then--idiot me listened to so called friend in a PC game, downloaded something i shouldn't have, attempted to open said folder and see how many it would stop lol (bad idea) So badly infected shop ended up having to replace all parts to get system stable again--(with lesser parts as couldn't afford to go balls to the wall again unforuately)
For my Extenstive Testing of OneCare, was gifted a paid subscription til Microsoft Security Essentials released

Then Switched to Avast Free when i believed article that Security Essentials wasn't that good for protection (used that til 2018)

Then Fully switched to Windows Defender/Microsoft Security full time, and in 2020 added Malwarbytes Premium for full protection

I gave up on Norton's anti virus years ago when it decided to quarantine every thing that I compiled while writing software. What a pain it was to even do a test run of something I was developing. Norton themselves were no help. One help agent actually suggested that I not develop software on the particular machine I was using, as that would solve the quarantine problem.

Uninstalled that very afternoon.

jeffbeish said:

Hum, Peter started on land lines before 1982. Can't remember the exact utility but I think it was "Wash." It has been awhile, so much of the very first stuff was on noisy phone lines.

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That might be possible but it was before my time as I was 8 in 1982 and didn't use computers until 1984 or so. Norton Utilities had something called Norton Calibrate which was in Norton SystemWorks but later disappeared. Calibrate allows non-destructive data low level formatting of the HDD's which worked well and was more advanced than SpinRite which was slow and basically you can't use the compute at the same time.

I stopped using 3rd party AVs a decade ago. They are so intrusive. They only get in my way like I am a 5 year old who doesn't know what I am doing. 3rd party AVs interrupt you most of the time making you think it is doing its job. So annoying. Even downloading an update makes it very painful sometimes.

TraderGary said:

And you put your faith in Kaspersky, headquartered in Moscow, Russia?

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That has nothing to do with it. In fact, if you look at what's possible in software, those are original products. Remember Microsoft bought companies as in the older days, their defragger either came from Norton or PC Tools just like Windows Defender is more of a free level of security and is not going to be the same as a commercial paid product. I have seen and I have fixed computers for banks as there McAfee has been superior to Norton when it comes to actually cleaning up a virus but Win32.tenga which overwrites all .exe files on the system will reactivate and no virus scanner which includes ESET NOD32, Kaspersky, Microsoft AntiVirus, Norton, McAfee will clean up as it will detect it while the virus reactivates but the virus will still attack all the files on the system for example since none of them will actually stop the virus and assuming you replaced all the .exe's with good copies, the virus will still strike again within 30 days since it can't detect the virus on any of the files and only detects it when it activates and then just allow the virus to attack every .exe file on the system. So from experience, I trust none of them as it only works for the non-dangerous stuff but when it comes to real problems, it will not stop the attacks except show you a pop up while the virus will attack everything else. You would only know when you actually experience a virus and not talking about the elemetary level of things it stops, there are lots of them that it won't stop. And if you look at software, have you noticed that it's always the Russians who can reverse engineer and patch the paid software faster before you even know the new version of the software is out. Windows Defender is good for a free product as there are lots of false positives and when you select allow on something, they always lists it as threat blocked when it should be threat allowed and then it keeps redetecting things that are allowed as well as lots of false positives. I find lab tests are meaningless as the only real experience is when one experiences a virus and the A/V that can stop it without it continuing to attack in the background would be what is good or not.

Almighty1 said:

That might be possible but it was before my time as I was 8 in 1982 and didn't use computers until 1984 or so. Norton Utilities had something called Norton Calibrate which was in Norton SystemWorks but later disappeared. Calibrate allows non-destructive data low level formatting of the HDD's which worked well and was more advanced than SpinRite which was slow and basically you can't use the compute at the same time.

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Hum, that makes me feel old since I was 42 in 1982. My first "computer" work was analog systems in flight simulators. Several of us Air Force guys took up electronics as a hobby and digital computers began to come along, so we learned what we could about them. Years passed, finishing college and head long into the digital world as an engineer -- then along came computer/phone hookup that quickly grew into PC circuitry for the birth of Internet. Wow, 300 baud stuff. Someone should have warned us.

jeffbeish said:

Hum, that makes me feel old since I was 42 in 1982. My first "computer" work was analog systems in flight simulators. Several of us Air Force guys took up electronics as a hobby and digital computers began to come along, so we learned what we could about them. Years passed, finishing college and head long into the digital world as an engineer -- then along came computer/phone hookup that quickly grew into PC circuitry for the birth of Internet. Wow, 300 baud stuff. Someone should have warned us.

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Yep, but you also got to see things others did not so there is always some pluses and minutes. I'm one of the ones who got to see 9600bps and 18k modems before there was even a standard which was 1986 with everyone proposing to the CCITT now known as the ITU with a 9600bps standard. Hayes had their V96, USR with their High Speed Technology (HST), Concord with v32 and Telebit with 18K PEP (Packetized Ensemble Protocol). Telebit was the best at handling line noise while USR had the best SysOp program. The birth of internet was actually in 1969 while University of California, Berkeley developed the TCP/IP Networking stack. I do personally know Tom Jennings who created Fido Software and FidoNet in 1984. I guess in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was The Source, CompuServe, MCIMail, GTE Telenet, Tymnet and later in 1987 came Prodigy which was IBM & Sears and also the various PC-Link, MacLink which all merged to become AOL.

Norton was Good till Symantec took it over.