Disabling Norton anti-virus and Earthlink accelerator question

[piratefan]

I have recently downloaded an application from Earthlink called "accelerator". It's supposed to speed up my dial-up connection. Anyway, during setup, I got the message to disable my anti-virus program. I have Norton and it comes on automatically when I start up. I am not positive how to shut it off to do this setup. Then, of course, turn it back on. Sorry for perhaps a trivial post.
Thanks in advance.

 

[FunkDoobious]

I would be very carefull of so called "accelerators" especially if they are asking you to turn of your anti-virus. Most accelerators have the hidden bonus of installing spyware/pop ups etc on your computer. If you really want to turn off Norton Anti Virus you should be able to right click your icon in the system tray and disable it. Personally I would uninstall the accelerator. If you want a faster connection the best thing to do is save up for ADSL.

 

[jyrockck]

There is really no way to make your 56K speed any faster than the default or normal speed. The only thing that accelerators really do is keep more cookies, which takes much more space on your hard drive.

Only the Microsoft SPs are worth turning your antivirus off for. Other than that, there really aren't many programs that should make you turn it off.

 

[Jontmke]

What it was asking was for you to disable Norton during the install. Which is a good idea when installing software. As for what this "accelerator" does I am not sure. I thought those "fast dial-up" ISP's were using cache servers to get the faster speeds. Which can work if you choose a site they have cached. If you don't you are back to the regular speed. Maybe it is a cookie or hosts type program that redirects the cached sites to there servers?

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[piratefan]

Thanks for the response. I think I'll pass on this accelerator thing now.

 

[Dinobrago]

The application asked for the user to turn off the anti-virus program because they can, in some instances, interfere with the installation of programs. That's all there is to it.

Norton anti-virus can be temporarily disabled by right clicking the icon in the system tray and "Disable Autoprotect".

It is a little unusual - I haven't had to disable antivirus for an installation in ages but we really don't know what this accelerator is doing.

I don't agree that you can't speed up the connection. True, you can't change the physical characteristics of the line but a combination of caching and on-the-fly compression might make a big difference on dial-ups where the phone line is the bottleneck. Reducing the amount of information that needs to be transfered could speed things up quite a bit.

Course, what do I care - I have cable. ;-)

 

[piratefan]

LOL. I wish I could get cable. I live in an area where my cable tv doesn't have it. Go about 1/2 mile down the road, a different cable company. They have it. And I'm too poor to move.

 

[Dinobrago]

You might consider DSL if it's available. I have several friends who have switched from cable to DSL and swear by it.

d-