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!

[jim912928]

Well, I'm the CSO at our company and run Symantec Corp addition globally. We are not on release 9 (on 8) and have no problems. One thing that Symantec is top in is getting signature updates out very very fast. Others may have a product, but the threats are for the new stuff that comes out and speed of updates is your best friend. Windows XP must be wheezing on 128mb of memory. However, at home I have 1 laptop that is running XP, Office 2003, Norton 8.x on 128mb of memory and it runs fine (programs launch alittle slow but once they are up they are fine).

I'd push on Symantec for XP patches for version 9x