Question: What is the best way to provide security for my system? Purchase a product such as Norton System Works, McAfee, or PC-cillan, or go with the single-purpose individual products that deal with viruses, spyware, firewalls, etc.?

I used to swear by Norton System Works - it was one of the best tools available for maintaining Windows 98 and ME. However, I have been sorely disappointed by its performance on the Windows XP Platform. And, generally speaking, the same can be said for the other System Suite products. I (and others much more knowledgeable than me) feel that they are trying to do too much in a single package and they fall far short of their goals. It has been our experience that if the suite performs properly, it generally bogs down the system and when it misbehaves, it can flat out kill a system.

My first experience with a misbehaving Norton System Suite involved a forgotten password and messed up firewall settings. The computer could not be used for much of anything except word processing. I spent hours manually removing the software and editing the registry and I was absolutely amazed that the computer worked when I was done.

Read more about this on the RELATED LINKS below.

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I hope this helps!