OT: Need help with antivirus software, for 25 Pcs. Norton Sucks! Options

[Qarl]

I have 25 pcs at the office.

They are really just acting like dummy terminals as most of the work (about 90%) involves accessing UNIX servers through a terminal emulation program. There is the occasionaly web browsing session, and some minor Microsoft Word or Excel use. Most of the PCs are Celeron 533 or 700 CPUs, running with 128MB ram on Windows XP.

We do not utilize a centralized e-mail server. Our e-mail is hosted by our ISP. So each PC just utilizes a POP email account.

Anyways, we just area allowing our main employees (hourly workers) to utilize e-mail.

I bought and installed Norton 2004 (Corporate Edition) on all of the PCS and it sucks big donkey di@%s!

It basically makes each PC unusably slow, locks up and freezes when you use programs like Adobe Acrobat reader, and basically slows productivity to a crawl. As soon as I disable Norton (turn off autoprotect) everything is fine.

I did a search on the net and seems like Norton 2004 is not the best choice.

Does anyone else have a better recommendation? Here is what I need.

1. I really just need antivirus for the e-mail that integrates with Microsoft Outlook. I already have a firewall in place, and some anti-popup and spyware on each PC.

2. I need something reasonable in price, or that I can buy a multi-license software package.

3. It needs to be from a reputible company that is hear to stay and has constant updates for the latest viruses

4. It can not under the performance of the PC, or it cannot have known problems for interfering with other commonly used office software.

5. I don't need a Mac or a Unix box. I know you guys love your little Apples or open source machines, but a need to stay with PCs please.

Thanks for your assistance.

As always, you guys rock!

[Pnambic]

Yeah, the Windows XP box says that it *can* run on 64MB of RAM, but for all intents and purposes, 128 should be the minimum. Running a real-time anti-virus program is going to suck up memory resources quite voraciously whether its Norton or some other program. If it didn't suck up resources, I wouldn't trust the job it was doing. I honestly don't think you'll find much luck trying other programs. You're best bet is probably upping the RAM on those computers to 256MB.

If you're running Celeron processors, you're probably using PC100/133 where 128 MB of Ram would cost about $18 per stick including shipping (according to www.pricewatch.com). If you're using DDR, maybe as cheap as $16 per chip. And a nice side effect is that this upgrade would help all other programs you may be running as well.