Jeff's Lunchbreak

A couple years ago, I'd gotten fed up with Norton antivirus products. They were a serious drain on system resources, and very obtrusive. I did a bit of research, and found that BitDefender looked like a good choice. I downloaded the trial version, and I liked it quite a bit - small, fast, unobtrusive, easily disabled when you wanted to install new programs - all the things Norton wasn't. Then BitDefender 2009 came out, and a lot of those advantages went out the window. I continued using it, because it was already on my system and I didn't feel like spending the time to change, but I wasn't exactly ecstatic about it, anymore. Then came the kicker. My subscription just expired. Now, I know I'm not the most organized person in the world, and I know I shouldn't let my antivirus subscription expire, but it happens to me almost every year on at least one of the computers I manage. It's never been a huge deal - the antivirus software continues to work; I'm just a day or two behind in getting the most up to date virus definitions by the time I renew the subscription. Not so with BitDefender 2009. When the subscription ran out, BitDefender went completely inactive. All that remained running was a little icon in the system tray to renew the software. Can you imagine that? An antivirus program that quits running entirely because you were late in renewing your subscription? Well BitDefender, you've lost my business and that of the company where I do all of the IT.

Anyway, with the prospect of renewing my antivirus software, I did a little research, and it turns out that Symantec completely overhauled their products in 2009, and their antivirus software is now among the least obtrusive and most efficient on the market. So, I decided to go back to Norton. Hopefully it turns out to be as good as the reviews say.

Update 2009-08-25 Well crap. Apparently, Norton doesn't support XP 64. What the hell? How can a major software company not support XP 64 in a new release? Only Symantec's enterprise solutions support XP 64, and considering that we only have a handful of computers in the office, and they all already have antivirus software on them, I don't want to go through the hassle of installing the enterprise solution for one computer. After a little more looking, ZoneAlarm and McAfee don't support XP 64, either. So, I'm going with a product I've never used before and haven't heard much about - Avast. I hope this one works.