free anti virus and firewall

Norton AntiVirus (NAV) is a product of Symantec Corporation and is one of the most widely installed antivirus programs. The current version is Norton AntiVirus 2006. Norton AntiVirus is sold as a standalone product and is also included as part of Norton SystemWorks. AVG Free Advisor: Free anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools. In addition, there is also a standalone Corporate Edition version, which is aimed to a centrally managed corporate environment. It is called Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition, and has different features not present in the traditional retail version of the software. There are 72,577 total viruses detected as of July 4, 2006.

History

Since its birth in 1990, over 100 million people around the world have used it. Early versions of Norton AntiVirus were integrated and took much from Central Point Anti-Virus (CPAV), which was acquired by Symantec in 1994. AVG anti virus & firewall. CPAV was also integrated into the Microsoft Anti-Virus utility.

Criticisms

Resource usage

Despite its widespread adoption, it carries a reputation within parts of the computer enthusiast community as being slow and inefficient, ineffective, and difficult to uninstall. Some computer professionals have reported encountering machines infected with a virus despite having NAV installed and (in most cases) being fully up-to-date. In addition, its GUI is not based on standard Windows graphic interface libraries; instead, the Internet Explorer rendering engine is used.

It should be noted, however, that the Corporate Edition does not bear any of these perceived problems. Directory Of Firewall Providers.