I think the main objection most have about Norton is that is resource heavy which it can be "IF" it is running on a system with marginal performance specs and the user does not disable the features that don't have anything to do with protection like pulse updates, disk defrag and temp file cleaning, idle time optimization and all those things that have nothing to do with protection. On the other hand, Norton is among the best or close to it when it comes to protection which is the important thing.
I have been running a version of Norton for about 13 years. From 2001 to 2010 I ran Norton AV on a Compaq XP desktop and from 2010 to current, Norton 360 on the same machine. In 2013 I purchased a new HP Windows 8 desktop preloaded with Norton Internet Security which I converted to Norton 360 several months later and I have updated this desktop to 8.1 with all current updates including optional. Throughout all these years I have never had a conflict with any updates whether it be Windows, Norton, HP or any installed software. Best of all, I have never had a virus or any malware and I surf the net rather recklessly. A couple of months ago I purchased a new HP 8.1 laptop which I immediately uninstalled McAfee and installed Norton 360. Again, no problems whatsoever.
I decided to post this because I get kind of tired hearing Norton get slammed when it is actually a very effective product with many millions of users worldwide and if the user takes the time to get to know the product and disable the features that don't have anything to do with protection I think they will be surprised at how efficiently it runs.
And by-the-way, in all the years using Norton I have never disabled anything to get updates, I don't even turn off tamper protection to do a restore although it may be a good idea.
If the Norton product is free and the users machine has reasonably good performance specs and the user disables the unnecessary features I would have a hard time advising them not to use it.
That's it, I have said my piece. I am sure there are different opinions and I respect that but all I can do is relay my own personal experiences over many years with several different machines and different versions of Widows.