Just bought Norton IS 1 year license

This came as a trial on my thinkpad X230. This is my first AV purchase in 8 years or so. Im quite impressed with Norton. It's quite fast and very unobtrusive.

 

If you used Norton back those 8 years ago, I can imagine the difference. It used to be a bloated monster, but now it runs very smooth.

 

I would say that almost every AV software works perfectly now in terms of not slowing down a computer. Maybe because the industry has gotten better with their coding efficiency or maybe because computers today are just faster.

 

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php

Some are heavier than others.

 

I've gone back to Norton in the last few days. I don't know that I feel it is the best protection but but does cause the least problems and causes the least amount of slowdown. I figure combined with EMET is should be good enough.

 

Don't you understand, it means nothing on modern computers. I could run a 1GB memory use AV on my computer "5x more then even the most "heavy" in tests" and would not notice it. I was running G-DATA 2012/2013 on a 1GB memory net-book with 1.6ghz core clock and you could not tell it was there and its one of the considered highest resource usage AV software's. It honestly does not even matter anymore.

 

Off topic, but have you ever tried SecureAnywhere? I find it even less obtrusive than Norton - which as you note is pretty good in that respect - and better supported by the vendor.

 

I did once and I couldn't get past the interface. That might be a non issue for some, but I personally couldn't live with it.

 

Is it the layout that puts you off or the low contrast and small fonts? It's the latter that I dislike. Fortunately I don't open it up often.

 

Sure I agree if you are only looking at the RAM aspect. My laptop got 8GB ram and even a 2GB usage by a single AV wouldn't be noticed. But these guys don't only check RAM usage but also CPU and I/O as well, which today are the biggest bottlenecks. And these are very much so indicators how fast your AV will perform. Now there are several other variables such as how often the CPU/ hard drive gets trashed and so they performed several tests with file copying, PDF opening, archiving, installing/uninstalling and downloading files. These are everyday tasks that users perform. While I don't think their tests are anywhere close to perfect but by all means they can point out AVs which are trashing the system at certain operations as oppose to those that are working quite smoothly. Together with actually installing and testing an AV, these tests can be very very useful.

 

Agreed - newer PCs have more than enough ram so ram usage is no longer the issue. I/O though can be problematic since the hard drive is the slowest component.

 

The whole thing really. But definitely small fonts don't work for people that stare into a computer screen for a living. The eyes get tired.

SSDs make a huge difference, but are still too pricey for many. Myself included.

 

You did the most correct thing man. Don't pay heed to AV test reports. Run it & you will be amazed.

 

We should give symantec some credit here.There product has improved over the years tremendously.
It is very light from what i remember.I used the 2011 version and i was impressed with it overall.

 

I actually do pay attention to those reports but I don't take them as word of God.

 

They have improved greatly. There seems to have been a lot of complaints about the 2013, but I have not had any of the issues others are complaining about. I haven't even had a false positive in a long time. Most of what brings me back to it is that it is the one product I can install and then pretty much forget I have it. I wouldn't do any risky browsing with it but that is what virtual machines are for.

 

Quite a few of my customers use one of the Norton 2013 products (AV/NIS/360) and the only serious criticism I can make is the FBI Ransomware virus walks right past it.

 

I do not have any inclination to believe that there is any AV that would stop gov't malware/spyware. These are custom made and mare definitions are not going to help you.
Run live CD for linux.

 

The virus I'm referring is not made by the government, it just makes believe it's a notice from the FBI. If you're curious look here:

https://webcache.googleusercontent....k-ransomware-virus/ &cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

 

From my experience these customer are allowing the software to run because they absolutely desperately must have that 'crack for Adobe Lightroom', even though Norton alerted on it.

I've set to see a FBI Ransomware bypass Norton when downloaded from the internet. Between the Intrusion Prevention (which blocks your usual Blackhole etc.), Download Insight and SONAR, its protection is phenomenal.

Good choice.

 

You may be right, but I don't know. The problem with inexperienced users is they usually cannot see a connection between some choice/click they made and the virus getting into the system. Sometimes it's obvious, for instance when they're p*rn surfing, but most of the time they're not looking for cracks, etc, they're just clueless.

More importantly I've seen fully updated NIS/N360 sit on a system infected with ransomware (also TDSS rootkits) and doing nothing. It's not disabled it's just blind. However if I can manage to run MBAM it will immediately detect and kill the virus. Why is that? MBAM, Hitman Pro, TDSSkiller, and others make it clear that ransomware, rootkits, etc, can be detected and removed from the desktop. Why can't Norton do so?

 

Oh thank you. I misread your post. I certainly don't think Norton is anywhere close to being at the top of the food chain. What did attract me was the no nonsense like UI and speed. And I also wanted to give them a try and see how I like them. I do run FF + NS so that should protect me from most drive by downloads, etc.

 

I believe NIS 2013 is now a good choice since Symantec has worked out most of the bugs with it. Took them over 6 months to do so which is unacceptable in my opinion. Hopefully they will do a better job when they release the 2014 version.

You might want to check out a few of the default settings. For example, boot scanning is turned off by default. You might want to set that to the Normal setting. You will probably notice a slight delay in booting but the extra protection is worth it. You can check other threads in this forum on additional tweaks and concerns about use of the default settings.

 

Thanks i changed the settings to scan on boot. It was disabled by default. Also added EMET 4.0, i hope it will play well with NIS.
I also searched wilders but I didn't see anymore tips on NIS2013. Most of the posts were old.

 

If you have SSD, make sure to turn off Idle Optimizer (I think that is what it is called.) It comes on as default and during idle time it will engage Disk Defragmenter. Norton claims it will not function if SSD, but I would not chance it.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Nort...dle-Time-Optimizer-when-using-ssd/td-p/861070