Norton AntiVirus 2008 - Efficiency test

[Arkaic]

thanks

[sundayx Veteran]

I've always liked Norton for their easy and intuitive interface and settings, but hated their performance. Performance is the key here.

[.tony]

People... if you read the post on the first page, he tested on a Pentium III system.

[Aquafox]

that kinda assures me in making the right choice to stay away from norton (no offence), personally I prefer McAfee products - though the installer is based on flash and all, its lean, responsive, quick to start, reliable and does not heavily affect boot times.

On an interesting note, I got a new HP laptop that came preinstalled with Norton AV 2008 - 3 Month Trial (or something like that), and I thought "why not give it a shot?"...so I bit the bullet and decided to try it...boy was I mistaken...just the process of installing the software was a pain, crashing (on Vista Home Basic) during the installation process repeatedly (bringing explorer.exe down with it), and in the end, it partially installed. After continuous attempts, it finally installed (5 attempts later) and was I in for a treat. Boot times extended by 3 minutes, CPU usage increased by 5% on idle, memory usage up from 400mb to 650mb out of 1GB physical RAM. Sure, the product looked great and all with the great graphic designers at Symantec, but underneath, the antivirus scanning engine was comparable to much leaner alternatives that don't forfeit the PC's performance. I got so annoyed that I just decided to uninstall it - another impossible task that required multiple reboots and manual deletion of folders and registry keys. Now its up and running with McAfee Internet Security 2008 including AntiSpyware, Firewall, 3 user license for about 1/10th the price of Norton (got it for about ~?15 from Kikatek)...

Perhaps this may be a problem with an OEM version or perhaps its the retail thing, personally i would'nt touch norton with the end of a 25ft stick...

[Dance.]

Eagerly waiting for the NA2008 vs KAV7 test.

[primexx]

Firstly, what do you mean by a clean system?

If your "clean system" took more then 1:30 min to boot up then I think your system is seriously screwed up...

And for your general info [all of you], Norton Antivirus has a BETTER detection rate that NOD32. Source

any particular reason you picked results from half a year ago?

[[deXter]]

^ That's because when he posted it, the last available comparative test on that site was done on November 2007 :p

[MtnDewCodeRedFreak]

I have had NIS since 2004 ....

the 2008 version's the best one, hands down.

I'm eagerly awaiting the 2009 version.

[zerologic]

Eagerly waiting for the NA2008 vs KAV7 test.

I would rather see the KAV8 Vs Avira8 :happy:

[leo_the_lion]

I've used NIS for several years - yep, I was one of those poor souls who suffered whilst they faffed the thing up in 2006 - but to Symantec's credit they turned it around and I now have NIS 2008 and I am very pleased with it.

I notice that your review was based on an 'old' system so to put it into perspective I looked at the load up time on my three year old laptop - AMD Turon 64/1024mb Ram/Windows XP - and it loaded in 1 minute and 47 seconds.

NIS 2008 files occupy about 70Mbs of space on my hard drive.

I like the fact that Symantec update their definitions etc about four times a week so they seem to be pretty much 'on the ball' too.

[Death Blade]

Firstly, what do you mean by a clean system?

If your "clean system" took more then 1:30 min to boot up then I think your system is seriously screwed up...

And for your general info [all of you], Norton Antivirus has a BETTER detection rate that NOD32. Source

first, u picked last year's results.

second, this year, they are the same[SOURCE]

and antivir has better detection rate and its free. didn't lag up my pentium 4 2ghz 500mb desktop as well.

I like the fact that Symantec update their definitions etc about four times a week so they seem to be pretty much 'on the ball' too.

avast does it every few hours.

[[deXter]]

NIS 2008 files occupy about 70Mbs of space on my hard drive.

Did you check only the Program Files folder, or did you actually compare the free space in your HDD before and after install?