There is not a lot of difference between the two, - or any of the several other good programs. No program can protect you against all possible threats, simply because the new threats have to be "discovered" before they can be whipped. Both McAfee and Norton have respectable - if not pure - records with respect to quick response and good defenses.

McAfee has had some recent problems. When ZD reviewed AV software a few months ago, they refused to allow their stuff to be included. The latest review gives their newest version (McAfee Home Edition 7.0) good ratings, however. The latest review (4/22 issue PC Mag) gives Norton (NAV 2003) the "Editors Choice" for home users, but rates most of those reviewed as at least "acceptable." The biggest difference they found between current Nortan and McAfee seemed to be in support (McAfee charges for almost all, Norton only charges for "most"(?).) and in user interface (which depends on what you like).

Personally, I stopped using McAfee because every visit to their home site fills the screen with popups, and I found I was spending more time cleaning their gratuitous cookies than I was cleaning up virus trash. (Their program did stop all attacks, so the only need to visit the site was to confirm that I didn't need more cleanup.)

Other contenders - PC-cillin 2003 and Panda AV Titanium both got respectable ratings on AV features, but Panda lost lots of points on ease of scheduling and depth of scan, while PC-cillin probably went down a little because of the higher cost of contract extensions.

Sophos apparently didn't have an "update" home-user product for this review, so it wasn't fully rated - but performance results from previous reviews when it was compared to equally old(er) products shows it favorably. Their corporate AV scored well, and if your boss buys the newest corp package, they say they'll give every employee a free copy of their home product.

John