Judging from many reviews and independent tests, it seems like Norton actually performs better than most of the alternatives frequently recommended. However, tech enthusiasts in general seem to have something against Norton and will often go out of their way to suggest Nod32, Kaspersky, etc.
Is it because Norton used to be pretty bad before the 2007 version came out? I remember having Norton 2006 back in the day, and it was really heavy on system resource use. But the later versions (2007+) have remedied that problem. It seems like Norton 2011 performs really well, as evidenced by the results below:
http://www.dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/symantec/DTL_PCVP2011_SYMC.pdf
PC Mag also gave it very positive reviews:
Is it because Norton used to be pretty bad before the 2007 version came out? I remember having Norton 2006 back in the day, and it was really heavy on system resource use. But the later versions (2007+) have remedied that problem. It seems like Norton 2011 performs really well, as evidenced by the results below:

http://www.dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/symantec/DTL_PCVP2011_SYMC.pdf
PC Mag also gave it very positive reviews:

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