Norton. Doesn't slow down the computer, much better zero day capabilities, a lot less resource usage. It's not as bad as most would think. They changed a lot and no longer focus on signatures but instead on zero day which is good. Signatures are just not good enough anymore. I also really like that community watch which is not a new thing with Norton. If not a lot of people have the file, it's safe to assume it might not be a good file unless rated good by Norton themselves.
Sure Norton has some false positives (but so do all the others). I personally like false positives (I know that sounds weird). When vendor makes someone sensitive enough (or you can configure it to be sensitive), it's a good indicator that real malware will be picked up in a flash. Norton is WAY better at adding exclusions to false positives whereas McAfee, you'd need to turn off the AV to add it to exclusions or it would instantly delete it after restore. Norton? They give you the option to exclude a file WHILE you are trying to restore it so it doesn't do this.
Don't get me wrong, McAfee WILL protect you sufficiently, but Norton has been doing a far better job and without the headaches that McAfee would give you such as slow boot times, slow program starts, and the adding of exclusions I was just speaking of. McAfee also has FAR less customization than Norton.
Do I use either of them? No. If Norton gave me the right away with detected files (add to exclusion, add to quarantine, delete, etc) before acting upon a file, I'd use it. That is literally the only thing I don't like about it. McAfee also has this problem. I will say that both in certain cases will ask you if it needs user intervention (mostly in zero day which both have or low risk threats). If you want a set and forget, Norton has the best configuration by default to do this for you. You can also manually make it even further self reliant by switching some settings. The main thing that McAfee would be better at is offline protection. Norton is mostly cloud but does contain some offline signatures if I recall correctly.
My choice is overwhelmingly for Norton.
