Any reason to keep Norton with Defender native on Windows 8 Laptop?

[120inna55]

My brother just purchased a Windows 8 laptop. It has the native Windows Defender on it, but it also has a trial of Norton. Is there any reason he should keep Norton? I keep seeing the new Defender (not the same as the earlier version) touted as the replacement for Security Essentials. However, I never really see Defender being referred to as "antivirus" specifically, but rather as "antimalware". Is this just semantics, or does it lack something essential that Norton has? We would love to ditch Norton since Defender is free.

 

[nelson61]

My brother just purchased a Windows 8 laptop. It has the native Windows Defender on it, but it also has a trial of Norton. Is there any reason he should keep Norton? I keep seeing the new Defender (not the same as the earlier version) touted as the replacement for Security Essentials. However, I never really see Defender being referred to as "antivirus" specifically, but rather as "antimalware". Is this just semantics, or does it lack something essential that Norton has? We would love to ditch Norton since Defender is free.

I have been using Defender and it's predecessor Essentials for year and strip all the other bloat virusware out. Faster, simpler, no bills, and Microsoft seems to do a good job ferreting out the junk.

 

[Ilya]

I don't know about Windows 8 specifically, but running two antivirus programs on the same computer is usually a bad idea. One of them needs to be disabled.
Which one is better hard to say. I used Symantec antivirus products for years, but I now prefer Microsoft Security Essentials (which is what I believe is now included with Windows 8 under the Windows Defender name). It is faster, smaller, consumes less resources, causes less problems and seems to do the job.

 

[Poke]

No I would remove it and use Security Essentials and Defender are the built in together now which is built into Windows 8 now. Once you remove Norton just make sure Essentials is running and update it plus set the settings on it then you should be good to go.

 

[meStevo]

+1 to MSE and Defender.

McAfee bugging me because my free trial expired on my Windows 8 tablet. Sayonara, didn't want you to begin with.