Ideal Computer performance and anti virus

[Korgeta]

I have a friend who is looking for effective anti virus and other software that can protect and improve performance, a simple ask on facebook has turned to 30 comments in saying AVG, Norton or Microsoft essentials are best to use, quite a number of different suggestions so far. What I like to ask here is, what in your own opinion is best for anti virus and computer performace.

She's on windows vista and given her line of work is looking for faster loading due to the number of files, documents and spreadsheets she stores on her personal Laptop.

In my case I said AVG free is a good user friendly anti virus, and to try installing spybot and ccleaner from http://www.filehippo.com/ Though to be honest I'm not sure if those would be needed with mircosoft security essentials.In regards to performance I was thinking on suggesting on changing the graphics on the computer to a more simpler look (I'm told vista's space is taken up by the colouring of the screen resoultion, as well as number of files on desktop) I stress, I was told that and not sure myself so thought I ask it as well.

Your thoughts and suggestions?

[Tolya]

Use essentials, stay away from Norton. As for performance, remember that each additional program clogs up your memory so any resident clients that are supposed to speed up your computer will actually have the opposite effect.

Get Ccleaner. It's lightweight and non invasive.

[Executor32]

Whoever recommended Norton is a fool. You have no idea how many machines I've had to fix because Norton fucked something up, the free version that many ISPs bundle with their service being the worst offender.

On that note, why does uninstalling Norton through Add/Remove Programs never work? It invariably fails, citing an error of some sort, and I end up having to use the Norton removal tool every damn time.

[Mr Bean]

On that note, why does uninstalling Norton through Add/Remove Programs never work? It invariably fails, citing an error of some sort, and I end up having to use the Norton removal tool every damn time.

Bad news, neither method works for real as Norton leaves lots of files on the HD even after install because who knows you might install it again some day. What the un-install does do is remove the core files and disables the program. If you know your HD size to the KB you'll see a fresh install of Norton and uninstall it right after you'll find a mysterious 25-40 megs of files of files left over after the install.

AVG is easy to use, AVIRA is as well but Essentials is good enough for 90% of people out there.