Norton Internet Security 2007 Not Much Better Than 2006
The other day we mentioned how a site had analyzed a lot of different software to see what slows down your computer the most. They decided to do some more tests and Symantec must have not been too happy with their Norton Internet Security 2006 result because they provided a copy of Norton Internet Security 2007 to test this time. The outcome was exactly what you would expect…not much better:
Rowan Trollope, who worked on Norton Internet Security 2007, commented here on CyberNet saying:
Take a look at Norton Internet Security 2007. I worked on this product, and this year we spent alot of time rewriting almost the entire product to make it light and tight.
The results are that Norton Internet Security 2007 and Norton AntiVirus 2007 are the best performing security products on the market.
The only thing that you have to take into consideration when viewing the above results is that many of the others listed are not security suites (firewall, antivirus, etc…). However, it doesn’t appear that it is the “best performing security product” since even the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite beat it in every aspect of this test.
Eset (makers of NOD32) will be releasing their security suite later this year and it will be interesting to see how it stacks up to the competition.
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Tags: Software
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Nod Rules!
Norton has always been a problem wrt slowing down your computer.
Have stayed away from it because of this reason. I really don’t see much of an improment anytime!
hopefully next time he will include Agnitum Outpost Pro firewall, which together with Nod32 protect my system.
both companies are working on new versions, which should be out by the end of this year, so it would be nice to see how and if they will improve. especially since Nod will have a firewall, but Outpost will be about the same (although they already have a spyware module), only better.
it is strange that Windows Live OneCare suit isn’t doing much better, which you would expect with such a tight integration, or at least the possibility to integrate it into the OS. hopefully that is because they are more aware of the chance of being sued for monopolizing the security field as well.
Yep, I have always tried to stay away from Norton on my systems and on relatives systems, purely for that reason, they are always sluggish/make your computer sluggish.
Currently using avast to which I have currently switched from NOD32. Would recommend both.
Yeah I moved away from norton ages ago after it used to spend hours scanning everything I downloaded.
Norton 2007? No thanks!
There are 2 problems with these tests:
1. They are run in a vm which is not a true performance test beacuse it shares the resources with the host machine which could be doing anything at the time of eacg test. Trust be it is a big deal.
2. Security software were not configured to have comparable features. Norton is slower on boot becuase it starts scanning very early, whereas most other antivirus software wait until services start and then only scan because their scanning engine is not capable of scanning in the kernel. I think for better comparison (apples to apples) file IO intensive software should be configured similarly.
I agree with you that it is a problem running the test in a virtual machine but if you are looking at this for comparison sake then other software will equally be affected by this.
Ryan - that is not true. If the host machine is consistent every time a test is run then you are right. But I doubt that the tester has followed that. There is no indication that while she was running the test there was nothing else happening on the host machine ( in the background or not and how “heavy” it was ).
But lets forget the VM for a moment. My second point above has more weight that the first. I ll try to reword - say Norton starts its scanning when the driver loads at “System Start” time ( registry param Start = 1 ) - assume that T. McAffee starts it scanning when services load ( Start =2 ) T 50 - doesn’t this mean that Norton will slow down system more than McAffee because it was active for a longer time. I think it is obvious. For true tests all products should be set to do run with comparable option set which can be the lowes common denominator of all because some may not have a comparable option.
Cheers.
Biased review? why compare all these stand alone product to a ’suite’ thats just biased reporting. You set it up to fail. We all know Norton is Bloated, why ‘fix’ the results? Personally Id like to see the real results. Just install Norton AV like you did for everything else. I did not see kapersky suite tested…
Mike: Your second point is definitely viable.
Joe: I mentioned that issue in the article but there were other security suites tested such as Zonealarm.
Joe, the guy tested Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303 in the previous test batch:
http://www.thepcspy.com/articl.....ows_down/3
I’m curious… what does it take to qualify an improvement as a step up from “not much better”? Regarding NIS, the figures you provide for file IO show an improvement of 40% and the Prime delay shows an improvement of 60%. Granted the boot delay only improved 2%, but how much of your 8 hour workday is taken up with waiting for your computer to boot?
The results chart you have up there has both versions of NIS highlighted as well as two antivirus applications, leading people to compare the results of those products - that’s establishing a bias right there. Visually making a comparison between a standalone antivirus program and a suite product that has anti-virus, firewall, intrusion protection, anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, ad blocking, and parental blocking. That’s like comparing a race between a minivan and a motorcycle. The minivan is slower, but it’s moving 8 times more weight.
And the Norton stand-alone AV product you test is over 4 years old, yet you put it up against much more recent competitors.
While I don’t think Norton should be spared any knocks for the stuff it doesn’t do well on (and as the “industry leader” they should be hard knocks at that), you should be letting it fail on its own and not give it a push.
Shouldve known!
I got Norton Intenet Security 2006 installed before and it just slow everything down from day to day…now i got my lovely avast!
Good bye Symantec!
What Norton needs to realize is that it’s not about doing a full scan as fast as possible. It’s about doing as little as possible, and knowing when you can get away with nothing at all. It doesn’t matter if their scanning engine is really fast if it’s still scanning every single file for every single virus. Full active scanning will always make a modern system behave like a 5 year old system.
Now I’m not a fan of these things, and I don’t really think Eset should waste time making a ’suite’.
I’m of the opinion that it’s better to have one program for each use than to have single ‘catch all’ programs. I’d rather be able to select the best in each field and use that, upgrading or switching when necessary, than to have one program to do everything.
I’m not really a big fan of the all-in-one suites either. I think it would be harder for hackers to get through a mixture of different software rather than one suite.
Exactly - in the same way that you pointed out how routers advertise their name to anyone accessing the front end (who can then go and search for vulnerabilities), all a hacker needs to do is find out the suite you’re using and they have a basis to work on. If a virus is made to disable the suite, that’s all your protection out of the window.
Our performance lab test manager is going to contact you to discuss test methodologies. In our performance test lab, we see very different results, both for our products, and for competitors.
We just had a session with many magazine test reviewers and went over a significant amount of the testing methodology, and we can share that with anyone who wants to take a look.
Also, the fact is that performance is about more than just boot time, we categorize it into 5 different areas: Boot time, scan time, memory usage, http file download time, UI Launch time. I posted to the Symantec blog the numbers that we have, which include both our 07 results vs 06 and our results compared to industry averages. See the my blog posting on this topic here
When you look across the boards, you’ll see that we made great progress, so that we now have a product which is some cases is leading the industry (e.g. Memory Usage), and in others, we are on-par or in the top 3.
While we’ve made leaps and bounds, we still have work to do. We are now somewhat fanatical internally about performance improvements, and will be constantly striving to deliver the best performance with the right level of protection.
Hey Rowan,
I would love to hear the details about your results and how the tests were conducted. Feel free to contact me at tech@cybernetnews.com .
I am running AVG full scanning of all files, along with Anti-vir SCANNING ALL FILES and my computer is running much much smoother than when I ever had Norton Antivirus…Before with just AVG full scanning of all files on it is still not a resource hog.
Adding also that AVG BEAT ALL ZOMBIE, TROJANS, and viruses on a pcworld test and Norton only caught a few, then they gave Norton the pick.
A way majority of these magizines are bias and get paid to say one is better than the other product. Which ever company/person pays more for their product it will come on top.
I have way better protection than ever when one is using/paying for norton anti-virus for FREE, compared to a TON of money to pay to license the product(buy a copy) re-new every month, pay a TON for Telephone support,etc… and then if one month later a new version comes out, having to have to pay another TON to RE_BUY it… I have NO gripes on the other anti-virus programs including MCAFEE..JUST NORTON…
will Symantec buy AVG??? rssssssssss
Purchased Norton Internet System 2007 for three personal computer terminals and installed January 2007 on three terminals owned by me. In July 2007 one terminal began indicating an premature expiration date. After three months of communication and implementing suggested fixes by support the erroneous expiration date remains the same. If the software expires premature it will be theft of services paid for and I will never patronize this company again in this lifetime.