Norton doesn't have a good reputation!

I use the free editions of ZoneAlarm and AVG. ZoneAlarm isn't perfect but is reasonably trouble-free these days. AVG seems to behave flawlessly (and I'm pretty picky). For antivirus, Nod32 seems to be well liked by WW members.

Kaled.

I hear nothing good about the Norton or McAfee suites. They seem to cause more trouble than they're worth.

If you can be patient for a bit the people at Eset, makers of NOD32, are beta testing a new security suite product. From the posts I've read in their beta forums the suite is coming along nicely.

In general I advise people to stay away from the suite packages. In today's market it's smart to pick the best of breed products and combine them to make your own custom suite.

I have used Norton Internet Security and ZoneAlarm.

Recently though I had to reinstall Windows etc and decided to go with NOD32 as my AV system. It is not currently a suite but as bill mentioned they do have a suite in development.

After the other two suites I am constantly amazed out how light NOD32 is, I cannot recommend that product enough and while it is not a suite is a good place to start.

In the past I used McAfee for both my firewall and anti virus protection. The options to tune the firewall were to simplistic for my needs, therefore I switched to the Kerio Personal Firewall instead (now Sunbelt). I am happy with this configuration.

Wow, I've never heard of NOD32. And it's not very expensive!

But NOD32 is anti-virus only, right? I guess another application (like Zone Alarm, which I've used in the past) would cover the Firewall side of it all.

Time is a factor in this, because with this Symantec error I'm getting, I'm not quite sure of my AV status...

I've worked with a lot of clients' systems in various configurations. Based on this I would say Norton / Symantec can be troublesome.
NOD32is good, but usually gets the same reaction as from you ("never heard of it").
AVG is well known and I've never had any problems with it at all. AVG-Pro includes a firewall.

I'm also seeing a lot of mentions about clean reinstalls when removing Norton. Does anyone know if the uninstall is that messy?
I removed it this morning and installed NOD32. It scanned my hardrive quickly compared to Norton, and my machine booted in a flash, which is already an improvement.

And thank you all, everyone, this is very, very helpfull info!

Am pleased you are happy with NOD32. It is not the prettiest interface in the world but has an amazingly small footprint. I am looking forward to the suite version.

Anyone know about the pricing - does 1 user mean one PC or just one account on one PC?

More questions: I'm wondering if the free version of Zone Alarm (which is Firewall only) is sufficient, or if I should take the Pro version. I wonder about the possibility of having NOD32 and Zone Alarm doing the same thing, but I don't think NOD actualy blocks anything: it just removes.

Have I got this correct?

I thought that everyone was in agreement that Norton and McAfee are the worst bits of software *ever* written, and have been for the last 15 years - just an awful, painful, experience for the user, and it seems the computer.

[I use AVG and have heard nothing but praise for NOD]

If you're interested in suite products there's also Microsoft's OneCare. The beta for version 2.0 is out and you can try it for free: [get.live.com...]

OneCare will protect up to 3 PCs. It has AV, Spyware, Firewall, Disc maintenance and other tools/features.

I wonder if you're really asking the right question. :) The question should not be "which is the best security suite", because in general you're buying snake-oil if you choose any of them. If you take a more general approach, you can look at what tools you need to protect your computer. From there, you will probably find that a "suite" is totally unnecessary, nothing more than an invasive resource hog.

If you have a proper firewall (hardware, external, usually your network router), combined with a simple anti-virus such as NOD32, AVG, etc., and you use an alternative browser such as Firefox or Opera and are careful with attachments (don't use Outlook Express with the auto-virus loading of the preview pane), then you're going to be safe without having to hand control over to some all-encompassing solution.