Norton Antivirus Review (2009)

See also Dan’s Norton Antivirus 2010 Review.

The two words “Norton” and “AntiVirus” have gone together like “Quarter” and “Pounder” since 1990, and again since 1994 when Symantec first acquired Central Point Software and Norton became one of the go-to Antivirus programs for kicking bugs on Microsoft products.

This time around, Norton is partying like it’s 2009:  the latest release, Norton AntiVirus 2009 is naturally meant to capture anything remotely resembling an infection on your system – from bugs and worms to viruses and other nasty metaphors.  The only question remaining is the simplest one:  Does Norton Antivirus 2009 deliver the goods?

How Norton AntiVirus 2009 Stacks Up

A good Antivirus software hums along, unnoticed and serene in the background.  Ideally, a program bent on destroying anything on your computer that might cause it to lag or crash won’t, you know, cause your computer to lag or crash.  Any Antivirus program that gets in your way too often is a bad one:  the goal is simplicity.  Set it and forget it.

In programs of Virus Past, Norton hadn’t always performed so well when it came to the old “silence” test.  It’s all too tempting for programmers to let a suite balloon beyond its own scope and add unnecessary features while sacrificing performance.

So how does Norton AntiVirus 2009 rank in the “set it and forget it” category?

Surprisingly, better than you might think.  Norton has had a reputation in the past for being one of the “suites” that loaded your computer up with too much firepower, giving your computer’s memory too much to think about.  The current suite, 2009, performs much better.

This is somewhat of a shocker, given Norton’s advertisement of “NEW! Rapid pulse updates every 5-to-15 minutes.”  I get annoyed by a Virus program that bothers me more than once a day, let alone six times an hour.  Like passengers on an airplane who get annoyed by the food but forget the miracle that is human flight, it’s easy to expect a lot from our software, particularly that our AntiVirus software won’t only do the job perfectly, but will never interrupt in order to tell us.

If I could have given one piece of advice to Symantec before the release of 2009, it would have been something along these lines: simplicity.  It doesn’t only make the experienced user happy, but it makes the product more accessible to new users.  I was actually surprised that 2009 made a concerted effort to accomplish what is no small feat.

Using AntiVirus 2009

After getting a check-plus for performance, it’s time to examine a software’s usage.  If it performs well but is no fun or not intuitive enough to use,there was no point to the great performance in the first place.

Norton doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel here, giving you the typical icon-in-the-southeast-corner business, the double-clicking of which will bring up the usual AntiVirus control panel of options and statistics.

What I liked here are the on/off features.  Not to the entire program itself – if I wanted to set it to “off” I could just get rid of it.  Instead, Norton allows the user to turn “on/off” individual aspects of the performance options.

For example, if you want to turn off e-mail/message scanning because you’re sick of scanning e-mails, you can shut it off.  If you only want to shut it off for a specific day because you’ve got big plans, you can shut it off just for a day.  Or a few hours.  Or a few minutes.  It all depends on what you want.

The typical usage features are offered, including the full scans and the aforementioned message scanning.  Norton will take up a little more of your memory budget during this time, but that’s to be expected.  Depending on the computer you’re using, this really shouldn’t interfere with much, especially if you’re running on a 2009 computer, as well.

As for LiveUpdate, the component that many people felt bogged Norton down unnecessarily, well, it’s still here.  But the good news is that LiveUpdate comes included and integrated with 2009, not as a separate entity.  Following the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) rule has paid off in a big way.

It should be noted, of course, that Norton AntiVirus 2009 is a long-lost cousin to Norton Internet Security 2009, in which many users have noted similar improvements that can be found in AntiVirus.

It should also be mentioned that Norton included a new feature called Insight, which is supposed to accomplish something related faster scans,  but you’ll probably have to be a more advanced user than yours truly to understand what it really does.  Beginners might be able to ignore this feature.

Conclusions

So, after all of this and some interesting updates from Symantec, how can we finally rate Norton AntiVirus Software 2009?

I’d go with the phrase “pleasant surprise,” in that it’s not totally enthusiastic but it definitely communicates satisfaction.  Many users of Norton in the past had grown weary of the lagging scans, the obtrusive and unnecessary additions, and the essential complexity that was being introduced year after year.

There is the argument that Norton is itself responsibility for these low standards, as many users have already given up and moved on to other brands.  But credit has to be given to a product that understands its critics and makes a clear effort to make the necessary positive changes.  The result?  A better product than ’08, which is all we really ask for.

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I can hear you already.  Okay, great Mr. Blog Man, I read your review and it is duly noted.  I will now get back to my fish and chips, or whatever it is that I eat.

Not so fast with the fish and chips.  It’s all too easy to read a review of a product like Norton AntiVirus 2009, but it’s another thing entirely to take the review into account and then see that the reviewer is offering you a chance to reach your own conclusions – for free.

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We Recommend

• Norton AntiVirus Review: 2010