Norton or AVAST? Most say AVAST - Why?

I get Norton free with my DSL, I get free updates, etc. But it slows my computer's startup!

I'm thinking about getting AVAST (Free Version).

Am I making a good move?

Norton offers "Live" protection, meaning, it will block the virus as we speak, without having to scan.

AVAST, however, has to scan to find the virus. What if the virus already infected the computer and I can't run the scan?

Should I sacrifice a slow startup and stick with Norton?

Norton or AVAST? Most say AVAST - Why?vincent

Two reasons. One, it is free. You have to register, but they will not charge you a dime to use it, and it is very good at what it does. Second is resources, Norton is much more memory and CPU hungry than avast is, and it will also usually install more than just antivirus. At the end of the day with Norton or McAfee you can have as many as a dozen processes running eating up a sizable chunk of your system resources and dragging your performance down significantly doing things the average user has no need for (such as additional firewall control and processes dedicated to scanning just e-mail). Avast is lightweight, and will not cause the performance headaches mentioned above. Regarding the concern over "live scanning" it really is not as much of an issue as you would think. As long as you schedule nightly scans than you should be in the clear. It's true that you would be slightly more at risk than someone with live scanning enabled, but to be honest I don't feel it is worth the perfomance hit that you take (and it affects perfomance across the board: copying files, launching applications, etc). If you DO get infected the odds that it would do any real damage before you run your nightly scan are very slim.