Norton vs. McAfee

will see 1,000s of opinions on this question.

both catch many viruses, but Not all viruses.

Some viruses will be catch by Norton and other may be catch by McAfee.

Both of them will not catch a spyware/adware, you need different utility for this.

You may have both and more anti virus, just keep in mind you have to activate/run only one of them... the other is run when you need a second opinion.

You need Anti Virus, Anti Adware, Anti Spyware.. and there are so many such Anti's that you need... If you want to be sure your pc is secure.

But you may need only some of them if you careful and paying attention on what you do, where you go, etc. etc.

...Both brands suggest Uninstalling the other...BEFORE installing their product..The newer versions of McAfee won't even install with Norton on the machine..

Hope this helps.

Grif

Just an opinion from someone who has tried them both. As the first poster suggests explore your options. I used Norton for years from when they were relatively inexpensive to costly. What I found was that Norton would run and do a good job most of the time. updating was usually smoothe and not many baddies slipped by. However there was the dreaded ''Client Core'' update. Anytime I got an update that needed a reboot (usually the client core) there were adverse results. The pc would boot up to a point and then hang for several minutes before continuing. This usually happened soon after Norton was prompting you to get next years version (around Aug., Sept.). I never could prove it was by design but it sure made me suspicious.
I switched to MeAffee and was not impressed at all. I didn't use their product long enough (to be fair) to really find out all the bugs but the biggest one the inability to send large files. At the time I was sending a newsletter out at about 2mb. McAffee wouldn't let it be sent. I went to their forums and found that it was a known bug and there was no fix in the immediate future. so I quickly uninstalled it and got my money back. What I finally ended up doing was installing AVG free version just to give me time to decide which ''popular'' brand to use. Well I am still using AVG Free. That along with the Windows firewall and I have been experienceing no troubles. I am on dial up so a broadband connection may produce different results so you may still want to do more research.
Of the leading two I find Norton & McAffee both clunky & buggy and resource hogs. AVG on the other hand seems to run almost unnoticed. Aside from the daily automatic updates you don't know it's there. No popup red boxes when a virus is detcted trying to enter your system. No interuptions when an infected e-mail is found (it just disappears quietly).
Please take your time and look around for something that works for you. I know you are under pressure because you don't want to go on line without some form of protection. Try AVG Free while you are looking. You may end your search there.
You can find AVG at http://www.grisoft.com