🚀 go-pugleaf

This is my computer setup. I use mobile racks to contain my harddisks, so it
is easy to choose which drive to use. I only use one harddisk at a time
except when I mirror the SCSI drive to an IDE drive. Normally when I do my
programming job, I use my SCSI harddrive. It contains only safe programs and
I only visit safe web sites using it. As I said, I copy the SCSI disk to
inexpensive IDE disks so I can use those IDE disks to test new programs or
visit unsafe web sites.

But by changing between disks, even all other components in my computer are
the same, it triggers the re-activation of Noron (Symantec) Internet
Security. Every year I bought new versions of NIS when I bought my tax
software. But that $10 only bought me one week or so, because after less
than one week, it always said I used the activation keys too many times. It
happened in 2004, 2005 and 2006. And each time I had gone back to use my NIS
2003 which doesn't have this very annoyed activation process built-in.

This year I also bought NIS 2007 and haven't installed it. Norton Internet
Security 2007 seems different from the previous years' versions because it
says 3 users license. As my one year subscription of NIS 2003 is about to
expire, my question is that, if I manage to test only two new programs on
two IDE drives, will Symantec stops asking me re-activate again and again?
Or after every mirror copy, Symantec sees "different" volume numbers when I
reformat an IDE drive and can't recognize it is the same hard drive?

My other question is that, if this activation nightmare remains, what does
other Anti-Virus/Firewall product have good quality and suit my computer
setup? Thanks for your recommendation.

Ar Q