Thursday, November 19, 2009

Free at last!

Do I give a crap about what's going on at Harlequin and their new ebook imprint and their new vanity publishing venture? No. Okay, that's out of the way.

I'm free of Norton AntiVirus. FREE! I toughed it out until I got my money's worth out of those thieves at Symantec and then uninstalled the sack of creeping, crawling turdlings that seemed to have invaded every function of my computer. God, what a difference it made in performance!

You can't begin to imagine (or maybe you can, if you've had to deal with Norton AV) how miserable this software made my every waking hour. Each morning when I turned on my desktop, it took at least an hour, a freaking hour, to start running smoothly. Sometimes, it even took an hour and a half.

But wait, there's more! Norton drained my virtual memory on a daily basis, forcing a stall-out as Windows came up with more. Around midday, and then again late in the evening, my PC would start to choke up again -- hung apps, frozen screen, the works. Three or four times a day, I couldn't get anywhere or do anything. And not just for a minute or two, but for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. Norton kept disrupting my Internet browsing; it kept disrupting other installed programs; it even fucked with the simple process of shutting down. It was everywhere, like aliens intent on abduction, doing God-knows-what to the innards of my poor Dell.

How can this be? I still don't know. How can an antivirus program that costs $60 a year be more destructive than the bugs it's supposed to fend off or neutralize? Where does Symantec get its techies from? The lowest 1% of Whatsamattah U's graduating class?

EVERYBODY, STAY AWAY FROM IT!

9 comments:

Chris said...

LOL - been there, done that, but not for a long time, fortunately. I've been using a free AV program for about 5 years and it's been fabulous.

wren boudreau said...

Well, what did you expect from Rocky and Bullwinkle's classmates? *g*

Tam said...

Hmmm. I wonder if that's our issues. The things you point out are things that have been driving my daughter nuts. Do I have Norton? Or McAffee? Damn, I'm going to look into it though. Glad you computer is happier now.

Word veri: nuffe: What you had enough of with Norton.

K. Z. Snow said...

Chris, which one do you have?

wren, aren't you too young to get that reference? ;-) I've adored the Rocky and Bullwinkle show since I was a kid. Fractured Fairy Tales, narrated by the late, great Edward Everett Horton, were the best kids' stories ever.

Tam, you must call on the Uninstall Exorcist if you have it. YOU MUST! Norton AV could begin to infiltrate your body, your very life. You'll start stuttering, then freezing up at inopportune moments, then losing your memory...ARGHHHHH!

Chris said...

I use Avast, which made Lifehacker's top 5, but wasn't number one.

LVLM(Leah) said...

OMG, sits next to you K.Z. and commiserates. Here, have a beer.

Norton totally fucked up my last computer. Crashed it over and over and over again.

I finally got that it was Norton and found this program that would eviscerate any left over bit of Norton because even if you delete their program, they leave their little sperm all over the place, making new anti Christ babies. Unfortunately, by then my computer was so messed up, that I had to get a new one.

When I got my new computer a few years ago, I deleted any remnants of Norton before I did anything.

I really resent that it's loaded on new computers already. WTF?

I've used the free AVG AV for years now with nary a problem, major CPU suckage or getting a virus. Love them.

K. Z. Snow said...

Chris, I've been looking into antivirus programs and found that AVG, Avast, and Avira come up again and again as both free and fairly trouble-free. Seems Avira is at the head of the pack now.

I also have SuperAntiSpyware, which seems a decent product.

Yes, Leah, I've seen the "Norton Removal Tool." But I'm afraid to use it because it requires backup of certain files. I'm such a dope when it comes to computers, I'm not sure I'd do that properly.

Tam said...

You'll start stuttering, then freezing up at inopportune moments, then losing your memory.

Well shit, I thought I was just getting old.

K. Z. Snow said...

So did I, sweetie. But that's how insidious this software is. It begins to play with your mind.

AAAAAACK!