Norton... YOU AND I ARE DONE!

Quick post about something that is really pissing me off... A couple months ago, I bought a brand new top of the line HP desktop. It came with a trial Norton Internet Security (an anti-virus/anti-spyware suite). Everything was fine and dandy for the first little while. I had no viruses and it did scans every so often to remove any potential spy-ware. Then it happened... my trial ran out and Norton began to become annoying... not just annoying... MORE THAN ANNOYING. Instead of letting me know when I start up my computer that my subscription expired and that my computer was not protected, it reminded me continuously... and when I say continuously, I mean every 15 minutes. This reminder involved getting a balloon pop-up that would be put on top of all my other windows.

Now that was annoying by itself, but then, in between the balloon pop-ups, I got the window pop-ups that I couldn't minimize and that I couldn't put other windows on top of... in other words... it blocked my view of the screen unless I dragged it off the screen to the side or clicked OK. There was NO getting rid of this thing.

If I should happen to click okay, it would whisk me away to the site where I could pay $50 to renew for a year. If I didn't follow through with the purchase, it would continue bothering me every 15 minutes no matter what I was doing, often interupting a TV show or movie. This went on for a good 3 weeks or so.

Finally, tonight, I've had it! I'm done. I refuse to be bullied into buying the update and as there was no way to turn the reminders off, I'm through with Norton (and Symantec). I'd rather pay more money to get a different virus scanner than give my money to a company that would annoy or scare most normal computer users into paying. So I bought Trend Micro Anti-virus/Anti-Spyware software directly from their website... downloaded and installed it... Let me tell you... nothing made me happier than clicking the YES button here!

I'll never use Norton again and will recommend to my clients to not do so either. It's Trend from here on out!