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!

[Malmz]

You might also try AVG or AntiVir. They are actually free for home use.

All this is just IMHO:

AVG only autoupdates every 14 days (at least the free edition) AntiVir is similar. No good. I have had some problems with a AntiVir install with XP.

Somebody posted that all good virus programs have high overhead. In my opinion, that isn't true. I use Sophos for 60 users at one client and it flies. It's a little tricky to setup to autoupdate (server level or script), but will do it daily or more once setup. I have had ZERO compatability problems with Sophos.

Norton definitely has high overhead. I have also had some big networking PITAs with Norton over the years when you run the SystemWorks suite.

I just installed Computer Associates EZVirus on a bunch of PCs a couple weeks ago. So far, so good. Very low overhead as well. Fry's has it for $29/user.

I was going to use Trend since I have had excellent results with it at home, but found out it is only available from resellers and I didn't have time to deal with that. My only gripe with Trend here is that I check about 10 e-mail accounts whenever I hit send and receive and it flashes their banner each time right in the middle of what you are doing.

Hope this input helps.

sm