AntiVirus---NOD32 vs SYMANTEC CORP (vista)

I have a full version of symantec corp for free from my school, but i'd have to buy nod32, which i'm okay with if you think it's that much better.....so which do you think I'm best off with.

Everything I've read seems to point towards nod32, but I guess I'm just to hard headed to think that Symantec, this huge company, doesn't have a better product...overall.

Should I just purchase nod32 and hope that symantec comes out with a better product then go back to them? Should i stick with my free symantec corp and just call it a day because I don't do any crazy hacker things??

I'm going to be using a firewall too btw...once I see zonealarm pro or outposted come out with something stable(ZA) or something that is'nt such a a resource hog/compatible with Vista (outposted)

I don't know what nod32 is. I've used both NIS 2007 and Norton 360. Both have been fine with both Vista 32 & 64. I had NIS 2006 with remaining months on my subscription - when I went to Vista it was a free upgrade to use 2007 (you always get upgrades as long as you have a subscription, its just a simple download). After that I purchased the 360 upgrade (was going to use their backup package but decided not to). I use all of the other features, including active protection and the fw.

I can't tell you what is better (sorry) but I can tell you that when I was working on a university network, using Norton - I never got a virus of any kind and nothing was able to get through my firewall. I had a friend that was just walking down the hall with a floppy and caught 1 virus and had two trojans on his and his wife's system that same evening! j/k

fwiw, both corporations I regularly work with (both fortune 20) require Norton Enterprise on all machines that hook-up to their intranets (which alone was a good enough reason for me to use on my personal systems - I wind up with the same profiles but they usually get notifications a day or so before me).

Also, there are plenty of free virus pkgs and many here like them because it saves them $3/mo! That could be extremely important to you as a student but for me, I figure I'll just smoke a packs less per month just because I am more relaxed - ymmv.

good luck