Extortion by Norton, how do I get around it?

A friend of mine is has been offline for two days. She has spent a total of 10 and a half hours over those two days on the phone with 5 different tech support people.

Even though there were no problems she could see, or that Verizon or HP could find, She was told there was no connection to the internet. FINALLY, she mentioned again (had mentioned it in the very beginning too) that when she purchased the computer a year ago, she had some problems and the tech told her she had been hacked, and to shut down immediately and install a $50 Norton system. Stupidly she did.

Finaly Verizon figured it out. It was a year later and the subscription had expired, and it turns out she has no choice but to renew. Because she was without Norton's protection, Norton is programed to simply keep her offline so she wouldn't be vulnerable to infection. Gee - isn't that thoughtful?

So she was forced to buy another year's subscription. How can she get around renewing next year?

Extortion by Norton, how do I get around it?antivirus

AVG is NOT, as good as anything else. AVG currently has about 70-80% detection rate (which is considered Medicore) and about 10-30% of the viruses that it detetcts are FALSE POSITVES. False Positives are, Viruses detected that are not real viruses but are safe programs.

When downloading freeware programs, remember: "You Get what you pay for."