These days, everything seem to be on steroid. Like the F1 on TV, that very fast very furious movie, and like the new Norton Internet Security I have been using for the past 30 days. In the beginning of this year, I wrote an entry on the Norton Gaming Edition. I’m still running that in one of my machines at home. Friends of mine know how much I value the speed of my quad core monster. Right after my Norton subscription on that machine was expired, I installed this 2009 version.
I timed it. The installation was indeed less than a minute as advertised. That’s pretty fast. From the moment I’ve installed Norton Internet Security till now, everything works in the background. That is, from live update (or now they call it pulse update as it happens every 5 to 15 minutes on its own) to quick scan to incremental full system scan. What is really cool about the latest version of this software suite is that scanning happens whenever my computer is in idle, automatically (see screenshot below). The moment I wake up my computer, the scanning stops.
So how quick is a quick scan? I just did one. Less than 30 seconds. How can that be? That has to do with the new Norton Insight. It is a community intelligence-driven technology that drastically cut down the need to scan common files. As you can see from the screenshot at the top of this entry, 87% of my files are in the trusted zone.
Just how resource intensive Norton Internet Security then? In terms of working memory usage, it’s less than 7MB. That’s pretty light. Norton Internet Security offers a higher level of protection than Norton Gaming Edition, for those who need it. And if you are into actively monitoring your security, there are tons of reports on security risks and scan, firewall activities, errors, Norton community watch, and more.
If you need a more comprehensive protection than just an anti-virus and if you work with the Internet a lot, Norton Internet Security is a good product to consider. Its small memory footprint, fast scan, and hassle free security management makes it certainly one attractive product to own. If not for the little pop-up that appears every now and then (see right), I wouldn’t even feel that Norton has been working hard for me.
3 replies on “Norton Internet Security – Protection That You Won’t Feel Like You’re Having One!”
I switched from Norton to McAfee a couple of years back, mainly because of the price, because I needed license for a few client machines. I find it weird that McAfee seems to be installing and updating itself every day when I boot up Windows. Its full scanning is painfully slow as well. So maybe I will check out Norton again.
Darkspore – You ought to try it out dude. Seriously. Norton has improved A LOT over these few years. I too have used McAfee. My full system scan is now incremental. Only happens when my machine is idle.
And now they come with those versions that you pay a bit more and you will have a 3 user licenses. Just between me and you, I don’t even think they count!
[…] 2009, Norton from Symantec has officially released the Norton Insight (read previous entry for my hands-on experience) that leverages on the community’s help in identifying what are […]