BitDefender Internet Security 2010 vs. Norton Internet Security - Need opinion

[la1787]

My new HP laptop contains trail version of Norton Internet Security from Symantec and I'm considering buying BitDefender 2010 instead.

Question is:  What is your opinion of Norton or BitDefender?

I've had a bad experience with Noton in the past on my old laptop, but I want to be opened minded and reach out for other opinions.

What do you have to say about this? 

[Flymar01]

Hi, I have norton 360 and works pretty good for me. Never heard of Bit Defender. 

[Jonnas_tan]

I have BitDefender and I am very satisfied with it!  It's fast, effective, and it also has very good ratings in security tests.

So try it and see it for yourself!

[deason]

I used Norton on several pc's including laptops approx 5 years ago.  It was effective but pitiful.  Installation took hours of partial online updates and reboots over and over again.  Since then, I've used Trend Microcillin which worked well.  The Trend Microcillin 2009 really dumbed things down though, connecting to wifi hotspots was driving me crazy.  Sometimes the connection would work automatically and other times it wouldn't work at all at the same location, just different days, I couldn't figure out how to make the thing connect consistently.  This is what led me to BitDefender.  BitDefender has great customizations for just about every setting imagineable.  I'm not an IT or network expert, but I am able to manage my home network and wifi hotspot internet connections much better with BitDefender than I was with Trend Microcillin.  So for the last 2 years, I've been using BitDefender.  I would say it is effective, I've had no significant virus, worm, trojan, ... etc problems.  BUT I do have an older IBM G40 laptop, and with BitDefender, the machine ran very very slow and has a couple of wierd issues with Gmail.  BitDefender would only let Gmail delete 1 single message at a time - can't check more than 1 !?!?!  There is so much crap that you want to delete, one at a time is unacceptable.

Yesterday, I found several specific references about BitDefender and Gmail issues.  I then reviewed the comparisons for current Internet Security Suites.  Norton was ranked very high in most reviews and so I decided to buy Norton Internet Security 2010. On the slow laptop, I uninstalled BitDefender, installed Norton; It's like it's a new PC.  I've only had it running for 1 night and part of a day, but it runs great, the boot time is much much shorter (no specific measurements, but it is FAST); Gmail is running like a dream again.  Mozilla and Internet Explorer are loading much faster.  I'm using the default settings for Norton - so far.  At this point, I don't care about details, the machine works and is working far better with Norton than the chugging it was doing with BitDefender. 

I have an HP8710W that I use as a work computer which still has BitDefender installed.  Wifi hotspot connectivity is a business essential.  So I need to make sure that Norton will allow these connections or allow easy configuration to connect. 

Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I like Norton so far.  I will check it out on my 8710W.

[jonnas]

BitDefender 2010 is definetly better than Norton. I never gad issue with gmail and BitDefender 2010 installed. One of my friends had Norton and his system was running pretty slow that is why I deceided not to buy it.