HP Envy 13

9/10 Symantec Norton Antivirus 2010 Review

darlarob - 10/02/09  (Edited: 10/02/09)

It's still 2009, but Norton couldn't wait for the New Year to release Norton Antivirus 2010. Is this really a security application ahead of its time, or is Norton 2010 just an average A/V suite released a few months too soon? Read our full review for the final verdict.

Product Overview  Norton AntiVirus 2010 (NAV10) is a new security software product for home and home office use. It is advertised to protect from viruses, spyware, bots, and other threats. NAV10 emphasizes proactive security for the end user without compromising system performance; it is claimed to use just over 10MB of memory. Several new technologies for 2010 are included in NAV10. Sonar 2 technology analyzes files and determines whether they should be trusted or not, and Download Insight Protection helps determine the safety of downloads. Insight technology provides users with relevant information on files in their systems, and for more technical users, information about processes in Windows. These technologies are based on a new concept called "reputation based" security that checks files against a Norton database filled with data collected from Norton's user community.

Installation and Activation  NAV10 demonstrates its advertised ease of use when installed. NAV10 is a 75MB download; after starting the installer it takes only one minute and one click to finish. No restart is required either.

After install, the user is prompted to enter their license key and activate their Norton account. This completes installation and activation. NAV10 has the most hassle-free install of any antivirus software product I have tested to date.

IN USE AND EFFECTIVENESS  NAV10 did not interfere with gaming, Internet surfing, or office tasks. It operated silently in the background; I only knew it was running because of the yellow circle icon in the system tray.

To test the effectiveness of NAV10, I used several virus files from Eicar.org, an IT security website. The four files provided for download, which have different extensions including .com, .zip, and .txt, contain viruses. Please see the test description for extensive information on the tests. Antivirus software should detect the files as threats.

NAV10 successfully identified all test virus files as threats, though it did not delete them from the download location. I was surprised at this; even though the files were neutralized and could not do any harm the software should have removed them.

PERFORMANCE IMPACT  We evaluate the performance impact of antivirus software in three ways:

1. Overall system performance measured before and after antivirus installation using PCMark 2. Memory footprint 3. Full system scan time Our test system is an HP Pavilion dv5t: * Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz/3MB L2/1066MHz FSB) * 4GB RAM * 500GB 5400RPM hard drive * Windows Vista Home Premium x86

CONCLUSION  Norton Antivirus continues to be an excellent and well-rounded security solution for end users. We think Norton is headed in the right direction by using data submitted by its user community to analyze threats. We liked the software's proactive security stance, minimal performance impact, and friendly interface. We highly recommend Norton Antivirus 2010 to home users looking for an effective but affordable security solution. This software will be most useful specially to those research writers who do multiple research landing and to avoid to encounter viruses that would greatly affect their specialized custom essay writing.

PROS: * Friendly interface * Low performance impact * Very proactive CONS: * No auto-delete of malware * Full scans not quick * Not free