Is Norton AV less resource intensive than Norton Internet Security?

I occasionally come across Windows XP computers that are underpowered and that run slowly when NIS2012 is installed. Will NAV 2012 be less resource instensive and possibly run better on these older computers?

Thanks

 

There's a comparison chart on the Symantec website:

http://us.norton.com/antivirus/

One feature that adds overhead is "performance monitoring" (PM). When I used NIS 2012 I turned it off (not sure if PM is in the AV though). The older XP machines you're referring to typically have 512 megs of ram which is the real problem. They really benefit from an upgrade to 1 gig. If that's not an option I think Webroot SecureAnywhere is a good choice as it has less impact on performance than the Norton products in my experience.

 

i find nav and nis both run pretty poorly on older systems. back when they revamped it in 2009 and even 2010 it was FAR better. but it seems each year it has become heavier and heavier i find 2012 to be a huge drag on anything pretty old and that 2gb ram is really minimal for norton to show little to no drag on any system even newer ones. we sell norton as well as others so i can assure you its something i install on a pretty regular basis for those that want it and i see how systems run with it very often. i do agree with the comment about webroot but i found it to be a bit over sensitive personally. another really good one to look at is the roboscan internet security version and also i find eset very light on almost everything actually i have installed ess v5 on a few systems with 512mb of ram and while it did slow it down a bit it was very useable with little slowdowns mainly only when updating and scanning.

 

Nav should be less resource intensive.

 

OK thanks to all for the info.

zfactor, does that ESS 5 you referred to have site ratings in the search engine results like Norton Safe Web?

Thanks

 

It does not.

 

OK thanks

 

imo there are better things out there than the norton safe web.

 

I just visited this issue recently on my daughter's old Compaq Presario with a Sempron process and 752MB memory. Ditto for my son in-law's PC with an old P4 processor with 512MB memory. Both have XP SP3 with NIS 2011 installed.

The portion of NIS that kills these old underpowered PCs is NIS's "optimization" feature. It is turned on by default and is Norton's version of Window's disk defragger. When that puppy fires up, it just locks up these old PCs. Turn in off and many of PC's performance problems will disappear.

 

WOT for example.

 

The optimize feature runs Windows own defragger.

 

Thanks for the tip, I hadn't really thought about it before. Turning it off made a noticeable difference, even on my desktop machine which has an overclocked i7-2600k and 16GB of RAM.

 

Yes, for basic defrag processing. I do however believe the Windows defragger is being called via API since the defrag you get via Norton optimization is much better that that given by the stand alone XP defragger.

I believe the problem with Norton optimization is with it's idle time processing. I noticed the lag on my high power quad core WIN 7 installation. The WIN 7 defragger immediately senses user activity and shuts down. Norton optimizer on the other hand keeps the defragger running for some time. Also more proof an API is involved here.