Norton came pre-installed on my new netbook, but as I had a spare MacAfee license I loaded that instead. It detected Norton during installation and took ages zapping it. I can't find any remnants. PC World are still telling people that they definitely need a firewall and antivirus with Win8/8.1. I suppose it can't do any harm to have one, can it? Or is this a potential case of mis-selling?

It depends what the customer wants, there are more bells and whistles on the McAfee and Norton products, but I see very little need in them now.. Most of it is selling tactics though most definitely.