Customer Reviews

Norton Antivirus 2009 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Honestly I have hated Norton products since Norton 04. The only good thing made from Norton was their removal tool! Every year they consume more and more. More than 1/3 of the computer resources were being used by 07. Show me a virus that does that! In my opinion I would rather have a virus on my machine then install Norton 05-08.

After trying Kapersky 09, Trend Micro 09, Webroot W/Virus 6.0, F-Prot, AVG, AVAST and Norton 09. I am extremely impressed with Norton 09! It's the only one I have stayed with.

Installs in a minute!
I don't believe in installing more than one security (antispyware, antivirus, firewall) program on a PC it will cause problems. I currently have a router with a built in firewall (all routers do have NAT) and the Vista firewall. I didn't need a 3rd party "outgoing" firewall. (If my PC is clean why do I need that?)
If I did want an outgoing firewall I would have bough Norton Internet Security. Keeping it to one security program!

As far as scanning goes it has a built in detector on safe services and will bypass scanning these areas for faster scanning. When your computer goes idle it starts a quick scan in the background. As far as up-to date definitions go it always tells me that my definitions were automatically updated 10-30 minutes ago!

Once installed it did ask me to log into my Norton account, which I was grateful for since I will purchase it next year. (if they remain like 09)
However the registration was easier then Kapersky and Trend Micro. Plus it didn't automatically enroll me in auto yearly purchase like Spysweeper did.

After trying various AntiVirus solutions for my desktop and laptop - I stopped using them due to the obtrusiveness and loss of performance. Instead, I resorted to being extra careful with what I download and from where and ensuring the machines were always behind a hardware firewall.

Recently though I had to copy data from untrusted source on to my laptop and I started rethinking my AV strategy. That's when I gave Norton AV 2009 a try and I found it a huge improvement not only over prior Norton versions but also over other solutions I had tried.

To begin with, I bought this product from Symantec online store. NAV 2009 is a small download from Symantec site and it installs very fast. Enter your subscription number, reboot and you are all set within few minutes.

Next, it starts nearly instantaneously - one click on the task bar icon and it's already there. The definition updates also are very fast and unobtrusive unlike with the previous versions - you will hardly notice.

The user interface is much simplified, with options for running scans, status bars for Antivirus, AntiSpyware , Intrusion prevention and Email scanning. One other useful feature is that the interface shows how busy your system is and how much of it is used by Norton AV itself - I find that when idle it doesn't use any resources and when doing a full foreground scan it consumes up to 30% which is good for a faster scan.

Additionally it allows the scans to be run in the background - in this case the scan will only run when the computer is idle. Which means you can carry on with your work and let the scan do its job when you are not doing anything - obviously it increases the time required to complete the scan but none the less I find it is a useful option.

It also provides a status widget if you are running Vista - but I am not a big fan of widgets.

Oh and if you are running the 64-bit version of Vista, Norton 2009 works just fine.

Overall a very unobtrusive and fast product.

Seeing as how Norton is one of the major players in the antivirus arena, one would expect the best. Unfortunately, however, the internet is littered with dismayed users who were infected by some form of virus, spyware, scumware, or malware, and all under the not-so-watchful eye of Norton. With a firewall, antispyware, and antivirus - or as I like to refer the three: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil - users should be safe.

Before I go on, I want to convey that I'm not a typical user. I've been a programmer, a database administrator, a network administrator, and a member of tech support. I've worked on top secret systems for the military. I regularly use acronyms and emoticons. I've shot-gunned a can of Jolt cola. I DVR "Attack of the Show". I know what I'm doing. While on a work computer, however, I'm limited to my means, and Norton was purchased as the company software. How unfortunate.

My computer was recently infected clandestinely by the Backdoor.Tidserv!inf Trojan. First and foremost, Norton didn't stop the intrusion, didn't give a warning, and didn't quarantine the problem. After I manually ran a full scan (it wasn't recognized during the regularly scheduled scan), however, Norton provided the information that the computer was infected with a high risk, high stealth, high removal, high performance, high privacy Trojan, and the software's action was to "review". In other words, Norton's help was, "Get rid of it yourself." What's the point of having Norton?! What's interesting is that the Norton write-up categorizes this infection as a low risk threat, but the software itself contradicts that concept - inconsistency that jives with the fact that it conflicted with other installed software.

After quite a bit of research online, I ended up solving the problem by deleting a temp file, editing a few lines in the registry, booting into safe mode more times that I care to remember, and downloading Malwarebytes Antimalware (MBAM) and Hijackthis - two programs that seem to do what Norton cannot.

The tragically hilarious part is that while running MBAM, the scan immediately found the Backdoor.Tidserv!inf Trojan, recognized that it was a rootkit driver (thus requiring more work), and THEN! Norton had a popup notifying me that the Backdoor.Tidserv!inf Trojan was on the computer. Like a judge needing someone to whisper case law into his ear while deciding a case, I'd much rather prefer knowledge of competency and ability before laying prostrate to the whims of incompetency.

I bought the download version of this product. It works on Windows Vista and XP. The download was under 10 minutes. The interface is clean and easy to follow. It automatically cut off Windows Defender which some people may find annoying. It uses very little of system resources and has a graph on the interface you can use to monitor the resources. It scans incoming email. It's different from the Norton I remembered from 5 years ago which was bloated and slow. It's $39.99 for the download for one PC. So far so good.

Only after buying this do you find out that you can't use it with your existing firewall. You have to uninstall your firewall AND not reinstall any other firewall except Norton. A simple warning on the box saying DO NOT BUY THIS IF YOU USE A FIREWALL would save people alot of people alot of hassle but I guess it would end up costing Norton alot of sales too.

I very rarely praise software, but Norton really listened to consumers and the 2009 version of the Norton security suite is absolutely amazing.

Installation:
Intuitive and fast. The installation took less than 90 seconds from start to finish, including entering in the CD key. I had Norton Internet Security 2009 already installed (the subscription expired, and I didn't need the firewall aspect of the suite, so I opted for the cheaper Antivirus-only package), and the installer detected the existing software and had me uninstall it. During uninstallation, my settings were saved, and at the end of the new installation they were automatically imported and immediately active.

Resource Utilization:
Norton users have migrated away from older versions to other antivirus options because of Norton's sluggish performance and excessive resource footprint. The 2009 version has been completely revamped, and now has a small footprint and runs extremely fast. Right now I'm running a full system scan, and Norton has yet to exceed 5% of CPU and remains under 8mb of RAM.

Pulse Updates:
Norton took a cue from rapid-fire updates from other antivirus products and pushed it a step further. Norton constantly checks for definition updates once every few minutes, and because it only downloads definitions that are new, the updates complete rapidly, often under 15 seconds from download-start to update-completion.

Early Load:
Launches Norton before windows logs-in, to provide even more protection from startup attacks.

Idletime Scan:
Automatically does a full system scan when your system is idle. The scan automatically terminates when you become active again.

Selective Scanning:
Will not unnecessarily scan files that are determined to be clean and safe if they haven't been modified since last time it was scanned. This reduces overall scan-times and increases performance. This can be turned off, and you can opt for a full-scan every time.

Experience with infections:
Once, someone decided to plug in a USB drive to copy a file over. The drive was infected with a trojan, but before Windows even fully recognized the drive, Norton detected, blocked, and quarantined the infected file. I was then prompted to delete it. I was pleasantly surprised with the pro-active protection, even before I attempted to open an explorer window to view the drive.

Easily 5/5 stars. Highly recommended.

I've used Norton Antivirus before in previous years and didn't like it much. Didn't find it particularly user friendly.
This 2009 version is vastly improved. It loaded very easily, and has run simply and very well. It alerts me when ever there is an attempted atack or I've tried downloading something that comtains a threat. I am very pleased with this. AND I'm very pleased with the price I paid from Amazon.com!

I've been a fan of Norton Antivirus for over 10 years now, and it keeps getting better and better. This was an upgrade of a previous version, and the installer found the previous version and uninstalled, and installed the new version. It did require a reboot, but this is normal for this type of product. All of my previous settings appeared to be saved as part of the upgrade.

During daily use, I don't even notice that the product is installed. Most Antivirus products that I have seen hang the system for a few second at boot up, and I don't see any of that here. Norton claims that this newer version uses less resources (CPU, RAM) however my system has plenty of both so I cannot validate this claim. I have a quad core, 2GB of RAM, running Visa Home Premium.

I would highly recommend this to anyone looking to purchase or upgrade your current Antivirus engine.

Very Good!. But careful. They include a "free" performance checkup on your Pc, and you know what it is? It is another virus and spyware checkup but you have to buy the PC performance improvement part.

I bought and loaded Norton Antivirus 2 months ago and it has been everything I had hoped for until now.

The positives: after you run it a couple times the scan gets progressively faster and utilizes fewer system resources than McAfee.

It runs autonomously in the background and downloads the updates without annoying pop ups and messages.

It blocks most viruses...

However, the negative destroys everything else.

My daughter is an avid surfer and came across the "personal anti-virus" virus yesterday. It made it through the filters and Norton is unable to delete all instances from my computer. It has infected enough area's that the computer is almost unusable.

I contacted Norton through their online chat and after 30 minutes of tortuous drawn out conversation they offered me help - for an additional $100. I almost feel as though Norton is extorting me. Make an Anti-virus program that doesn't work for all viruses and then charge extra to fix what it should have fixed in the first place.