Vi said:
...(I'm not sure I will be staying with Norton but just in case
I do....) have the Norton Anti Virus/Firewall which came with my
PC that expires in May this year. Is just renewing it with
Norton as effective as just going out and buying a new Norton
2007?
In 2002, I bought a still-in-box version of Norton System Works (NSW)
2002 for $10 at a swap meet. NSW includes Norton Anti-Virus (NAV).
NSW 2002 was released in the late summer or early fall of 2001.
I have installed (and re-installed) NAV-2001 and NAV-2002 on about a
dozen machines over the past 4 years, and when the subscription is
over I uninstall and reinstall the product and get another year of
free updates. Newer versions of NAV employ increasingly sophisticated
methods to prevent renewing the update service for free.
Once installed (even as recently as in the past few weeks), those old
versions of NAV will update themselves with the most recent scan
engine and virus definition files from Symantec's web site, so they
are just as capable at detecting viral files as the newest versions.
What these older versions of NAV do not do is any real-time monitoring
of the registry, or try to protect you from browser hijacking,
re-direction, phishing, etc. Then again, I don't know if the newer
versions of NAV do that - or not.
Newer versions of NAV have been universally derided for becoming
"bloat-ware" and consuming inordinate amounts of computer resources.
I have not found that to be the case with NAV 2001 and 2002 but I can
believe that for NAV 2003 and newer.
Norton/Symantec does not say, nor will they say if those older
versions are supported. But indeed they are, via LiveUpdate if
nothing else (but that's what counts).