Norton AntiVirus 2010 Review

Norton AntiVirus 2010 is the latest version of the Best Selling AntiVirus Program from Symantec. Norton Antivirus has been one of the oldest antivirus available in the market and it has been scrutinized by many of us in the tech community to find all its faults. While the versions that are a few years old meant that it would slow down your system eating up all your system resources, the 2009 version of Norton Anti Virus certainly showed up the trend to speed up the performance and clear the system resource hungry issues out of its way. Let’s check out if Norton AntiVirus 2010 really packs some intelligence tracking the viruses without slowing the system.

System Requirements

• Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
• At least 300 MHz Processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 200 MB Free Hard Disk Space
• CD Drive needed if not installed via electronic download

Installation

The installation of Norton Antivirus 2010 was simple and did not require system reboot. The installation was fast and required only a few minutes to complete. It is one of the easiest softwares to install.

Features

Norton Download Insight

It warns of the dangerous downloads that may be threats. This feature is a new one from the older 2009 version.

Norton File Insight

It works quite the same as the Download Insight and warns you of the malicious files residing on your computer. This is also a new feature introduced on Norton Antivirus 2010.

Norton System Insight

The System Insight Feature offers details of computer’s resource usage. The Norton Scheduler delays updates or scans or other functions when the computer is idle. This makes the system appear more speedy and less noticeable slow downs when the system is updating or scanning.

Virus Scanner

The virus scanner has three modes. Quick Scan offers scanning of the most important areas of your system which is most likely to be attacked. The Full System scan performs its job as expected and also does this very fast. A full system scan on my 80GB HDD took less than an hour making it one of the fastest AntiVirus in the market. Using the custom scan mode you can scan any particular area that you want the AntiVirus to scan.

Performance

In this section we’ll discuss how it affects the system performance rather than how well it protects your computer.

• The overall system startup time wasn’t affected too much. It added around 7 seconds to the total startup time.
• The system uses minimal amount of RAM, around 10-12 MB, which means it will not eat up the memory required by any heavy programs like Photoshop or Firefox.
• The Applications like Firefox took a little bit longer to launch than normal.
• The installation folder measured around 100 MB and the whole thing ate up around 150MB Disk Space.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Norton AntiVirus 2010 is the lightest and fastest malware scanner that Symantec has ever delivered. The scanning is fast and it uses less memory than most other AntiVirus products on the market. You won’t regret using this product untill some better contender comes out from behind the bush. For now, the Norton Antivirus 2010 is recommended by us.