Symantec Norton Antivirus 2010 Review Discussion

By: Charles P. Jefferies

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.

Read the full content of this Article: Symantec Norton Antivirus 2010 Review

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• 2009 Antivirus Software Home Buyers Guide
• Norton AntiVirus 2009 Review
• Symantec Norton Internet Security 2008 Review

 

Chaz - Good review - Thanks! I am currently using a 3-license copy of NAV 2009 and I'm debating what to do when the license expires - so this is good info for me. Are you going to review the new free AV from Microsoft?

 

yes it is a brilliant piece of kit....... i meself dumped mcafee for NAV 2009 and 2 weeks later updated to 2010 free......

incidentally running on a DV5T 1009TX

 

Is it worth getting NAV now that Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is released for free? MSE is getting positive feedback from people on the internet.

 

to those who have key license either NAV or NIS, 2007,2008 or 2009 can use that serial to activate NIS/NAV 2010 without buying it. just uninstall the older version using their norton removal tool to be safe.

Nice review! it is good to see that NAV 2010 is performing great. I believe it is beating kaspersky in detection/performance ratio. From recent test in AV-comparative, it achieved advanced+ rating while my favorite AV is lagging behind, Kaspersky has only achieved advanced rating.

I tried the NIS 2010, I have problems with it. During long idle time, my notebook was slow to respond. i found out that NIS 2010 has an optimizer. It optimize your hard disk etc when your in idle. I turned it off but still same results. I believe their NIS is still buggy. so uninstalled it and went back to nod32 and comodo firewall in my win7, viola the problem was gone.

 

Interesting and great review! I just ordered Norton 2010 and I will probably try it out very soon. I actually don't mind if the full scans are slow, as long as it's effective!

 

Norton Antivirus was the best up until 2003... since then it has gone down hill. but I am no expert.

and Peter Norton has nothing to do with antivirus anymore... they bought out his name... etc...........

 

A good review of Norton! I used 2007,08 and 09. I loved it, everyone was bashing it but it was still good (by the way, 2008 & 09 still used a lot of memory but under Vista/7 it went on the page file and not the ram, I guess same on this one?)

 

I would not have recommended Norton a few years ago; it was slow and inconvenient.
Their 2009 and 2010 products are top notch based on my testing. I have a lot of experience with AV products.

That's a good question and I don't know exactly how it uses so little memory or hides its usage . . . all I know is that it barely changed the amount of memory our test system used, and did not decrease overall system performance more than a few percent (unnoticeable).

 

There is one major flaw in your review. You do not touch on the Insight system nearly enough. You compare NOD32 to NAV 2010's first scan speed, but NAV 2010's insight system would classify all objects and subsequent scans would be much shorter. This isn't the same as the Quick Scan.

 

No. *sighs* 90% of computer users do not need the software that is presented in this package. You are reporting system impact. What about file transfer impact? What about browsing impact with all the addins they add into the browser to make it "secure" what about the popups about OMG! THAT SOFTWARE IS TRYING TO TALK TO SOMETHING OUTSIDE YOUR BOX! OMG!

While saying a 5% performance hit and 10MB memory footprint may very well be part of the Symantec puzzle its not the entire story.

Now with Microsoft and Microsoft security Essentials out of beta I've found that your average user needs to following.

-Firefox 3.5 (With addblocker and noscript.)
-Outlook 2007 (If you still use none web based e-mail. '07 is pretty damn secure at this point.)
-Windows 7 (That has both integrated system file security, plus a pretty robust firewall.)
-Microsoft security Essentials

You get those things and set Windows Update to auto update. You don't need Symantec software.

PS- I'm a contractor for symantec and even though I have access to a free license I don't use their wares. In point of fact if I was going to run anything of theirs it would be Endpoint protection that is the successor to Norton Corp Edition that rocked....on toast. A lean, fast, not in your face virus scanner that did just virus scanning and did it well. Right now though there is nothing out yet for Win7.

 

How does NAV 2010 compare to Symantec Endpoint Protection?