Norton = High Dollar Slug or Mozilla FireFox

[sunvalleylaw]

you will not regret it! R R

ww

I am reading/replying via a 5 or 6 year old Powerbook Ti. I tend to get my money's worth out of them. Saving up for a 17 inch MacBook Pro now.

 

[warren0728]

yep i am using a older mac Ti Powerbook too....my main computer is a dual processor 1.8 mgz g5 with 4 gigs of ram...but for sitting on the couch watching the tube and having a scotch the old powerbook runs just fine.

Will probably upgrade next year sometime.

ww

 

[Hogfullofblues]

As I see it I need protection in the form of:

1. Fire Wall
2. Spy Ware

And to use Fire Fox as my browser.

Tim, as you can already see by this thread alone, opinions do vary, and for good reasons. Robert uses AVG, but it crashed Justa's computer. Justa has found a minimalistic way to stay protected, but he has been computing since it all started, is pretty savvy and does monthly browser based scans and uses a sniffer. And both of these guys in the know have mentioned being careful or using common sense, which is knowledge based. So your options are endless and end up being dependent on how knowledgable you are and how much time and effort you are willing to put into it.
If you're looking for simplist, than a security suite like you already have is the way to go along with it's system hogging and degrading size (see Gate's Law #1), and the cost. If you stick with norton/webroot, there are confiuration options that can be tweaked to improve your situation. According to this review, the Microsoft suite bogged down the system the least and was the easiest to configure.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125817-page,1-c,firewalls/article.html

The common wisdom for the average user would seem to include what you have listed, plus an anti-virus program. So if you go this way, you may want to consider one of the AV apps suggested earlier. Just make sure to follow Justa's step 7 with any changes in case of conflict.
Since I already have Norton also (but have that firewall connection issue), I am trying this: Zone Alarm firewall, Microsoft Defender anti-spyware, Firefox for browsing and Norton just for anti-virus since I already have it. I disabled everything in norton except the AV and then configured it to be as unobtrusive as possible. So far, no issues and a noticeable improvement in speed. Pretty simple once everything was installed and configured although I believe I have to remember to manually update Zone Alarm from time to time. Just remember to uninstall norton completely, should you ever decide to do that, requires extra steps including the norton removal tool. I have had to go thru this a few times but the info is available at norton support or thru their live chat. I'll be doing this once my subscription runs out.

Do I really need to have these programs perform deep scanning on all drives? I have 3 internal drives; C, D & G and one large external. The external is where I keep all my music (CDs, MP3, backing tracks) and other guitar related files and programs.

Not sure if this is needed, but can see how this would take forever with all those drives and bog things down. But since ya got it, why not do it? Maybe the trick here is to configure the scans to take place when you are not typically using the machine. Then all you have to do is remember to leave it on then.
There's lots of knowledge here, so I'm sure if you need any help with any of this it will be available.
As Red Green says, I'm pulling for ya, we're all in this together,
Hog

 

[Tim]

Disregard this post. I discovered I mis-spelled Google. I had typed in Goggle and got what I askked for. Thanks for your patients.

Last week I added Mozilla Fire Fox on to my laptop computer. As long as I did not shut it down it ran OK. When I was complete with it three days ago, I shut down the laptop.

Today I turned on the laptop and clicked on the Fire Fox icon. I had made Goggle as my home page on the Fore Fox browser. Now when I open the Fire Fox browser I get all kinds of Add web pages that tell me that I won something or what the latest trash on Britney Spares. No matter what I try, I keep getting this web page.

I cannot get to Goggle to perform a search. What is going on with my laptop? So far I am happy I did not put Fire Fox on my two desktop computers. Help me … please.

Oh yes. When I use the Windows Explorer, everything works OK

 

[sunvalleylaw]

i use firefox on my macs....i really like it

ww

I just loaded firefox because Safari is having issues with eBay at the moment. (I am selling some skis). Firefox seems pretty nice so far. It is interesting, however, how it changes the look of pages. My signature here for example looks a lot different. Buttons look nicer to me in Safari as well. I will use both a while and see which one I like better.

 

[Robert]

Hey Tim, sounds like you may have adware garbage running on the machine. Get Ad Aware at http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html and install and clean.

Firefox is a fantastic browser. It has addons/extensions for many things. See https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/recommended/ for a list of recommend addons.