Norton Anti-Virus = malware

So I’m cleaning up two Vista laptops right now.  Evidently August is the time to snap them up.  In trying to clean off unwanted and annoying pre-installed apps, I noticed that Norton doesn’t really play nice like you would expect a well-respected name in software to.

Uninstalling it on the first laptop didn’t even complete, and after going guerilla-style on it in the registry, it still had some hooks in the OS that prevented AVG from taking over as the system’s anti-virus of choice.

Then I found this helpful tool from Symantec’s website.  Hm.  Reminds me of Gator from back in the day.  Hey, Symantec, if you know your uninstaller doesn’t work, why not include the Norton Removal Tool with your installs?  That could have saved me 2 or 3 hours.

On a related note, I still don’t less-than-three Vista.  Sure it’s got patches and a service pack update, and as long as you’ve got 2GB of RAM, it doesn’t chug.  But power-down modes still suck at the battery, and when I’m booting up, I can’t tell if it’s hung up or just slow.  No statusbar or anything: just a black screen.

This is exactly why I turned off quiet mode in Grub.