NIS 2006 vs NIS 2005 Performance?

I am currently running the complimentary 60 day version of NIS 2005 and I have to say I am very impressed with it thus far. Never thought I would see another Norton product that wasn't a major resource hog again but this one isn't. Anyhow I think I have decided to either renew my 2005 subscription for defs or simply buy the 2006 upgrade for $10 more. I have one other question that maybe some of you who have tried both versions caan answer. How does to NIS 2006 version do as far as resource usage over the 2005 version? Is it the same or heavier? In my searching the net I have com across a couple of articles where the reviewer mentions it being a hog on resources. I did not see any reviews mention that with the 2005 version and I can attest running it now that it is not. However I have to wonder if 2006 is a hog again, if it would not just be better to renew the defs over the upgrade.

Thanks for any insight on this.

 

I trialed Nis 2006 and to be really truthful I would just as soon keep my Nis 2005. I have no complaints with 2005 and 2006 didn't show me any benifits to upgrade.

bigc

 

Thanks for your reply on this. Did you notice any performance hit with it over the 2005 version?

Also remember that it is $39.99 for updating my 2005 version with another year of defs and just $10 more for getting a 2006 version.

 

i found 2006 NIS a little bloaty!! But i preferd NAV 2006 that was quite good..
Im not really a big norton user but im going more towards that , I like Trend 2006 too.. I guess if Hotmail.. and Yahoo use these 2 they must b ok..right??
MD

Also i like avg for its lightness but detection i guess isnt that good, i found NAV 2006 not to bad so stuck to that

 

Why update the defs just get a new NIS 2005 for $25.00

 

Last week I went to do a home onsite to setup VPN and RD access for the user to get to her office workstation. The home pc had NIS 2006 on it. Couldn't wait to get that beast off, even on her new PC, a P4 3.2 with a gig of RAM. Quickly looked at the list of running processes, those of Norton were summed up over a hundred megs. To me it seemed to molasses up a system just as 2005 did. Uninstalled that, she's now behind a NAT router, NOD32 installed...computer is running like a raped ape as a P4 3.2 with a gig of RAM should.

 

Pardon me but that is just baloney, NIS doesn't use that much RAM. I have used NIS 2005 and now 2006 and it doesn't use that much RAM, I assure everyone. If you saw it using that much RAM, something was badly wrong with that installation.

 

Honestly Randy, I have yet to come across a computer that doesn't run significantly faster after I've uninstalled NAV 2005/2006 and installed KAV or NOD32.

Might not be heavy on RAM but I don't think it's the most cleanly coded or light app on the market.

 

You probably summed up wrong processes. Norton 2005 and version 2006 run much lighter then that.BTW I wouldn't call Norton a bloat pig since machines are powerful nowadays (considering offered features).



tD

 

But the O.P. asked {thread title} which is better for him, NIS 2005 or 2006. He did *not* ask for a rude hijacking of his thread by people who want to post "ads" for competing products. I see this all too often and IMHO it is rude and uncalled for {unsolicited, unwanted}. Especially with Norton products it seems you people think it "open season" on Norton and you are not obligated to follow any rules of netiquette or respect of the O.P.'s question-concern. No offense .. but stay on topic guys, please ..

 

Did not sum up the wrong processes...I've been doing small business computer consulting for a looooong long time. I'm quite familiar with Task Manager even in my sleep. One of the processes alone was at One-Oh-Something megs. And I'm well aware that the memory footprint is not the tell all of system performance impact...but it's related.

Every time I install the retail home version of Norton Antivirus, IS, and install another AV like NOD32...the difference in workstation performance is night and day.....NIGHT AND DAY. Easily. End users often immediately comment on the same also, without me saying something to them to influence them.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. On workstations of all health, horsepower, condition, even brand new out of the box since many unfortunately come bundled with Sym or McGruffee.

 

Did you not even read my previous post? This thread is not about NOD32 or other products .. at least that was not the O.P.'s intent, it was a question about comparison between NIS 2005 and 2006 .. thanks.

 

Yup, and I believe in my first post I mentioned that it sure seemed the same, performance hit wise. Thanks.

 

I was not advertising, just supporting a previous post that you disagreed with. Might I suggest a slightly larger size of tighty whities to keep you from binding up? I was not rude and had to hop on a call before I could chime in with a bit more info. At this point you've managed to hijack the thread by acting as the moral majority.

From my perspective, having played around with NAV 2005/2006, I agree with BigC.

 

I am not questioning your expertise. I've seen many machines running NIS 2006 or 2005 and using much less memory then you claimed. Maybe this high memory usage is only related to this machines.? Obviously,NOD32 is lighter then NIS. NIS is a suite and NOD32 is antivirus (OT is about NIS).

The old rule applies, what looks good on me doesn't have to look good on you.



tD

 

I don't know what makes it vary from machine to machine. Possibly one thing might be if you had multi-homed rigs, say...stuck with the poor task of running Windows ICS. You'd have 2x networks that the Int Firewall would be snooping at. But that wasn't the case.

Scratching my head further....prior to me getting there, she was not running from behind a router, hence, with it being PPPoE DSL, she has the WinXP PPPoE adapter loading. Curious of the Int Firewall treats that differently...almost as multiple networks...eh, dunno.

Or maybe it's adaptive to total system RAM? The more you have, the more it eats? Some apps adjust to RAM dynamically, so as not to step too much on the toes of others on systems that are underhorsepowered.

And Randy I was approaching the comparison from 2x angles. 1) Comparing to prior versions..as stated. And 2) backing up by comparing performance diff against another product I'm famliar with. So it's double the re-enforcement. Both were clearly directly related to original intent...performance diff. Must as I'd love to, I did not turn it into an effectivemess debate in stopping threats.

 

This must be 'on topic' then:

Is 2006 better or worse regarding the system performance ?

Because i am very curious about that!


And BigC are you running XP now? i thought you were a happy '98 user?

And NIS 2006 doesn't run on '98 only on XP and 2000

 

I havent had Win98 since two weeks after XP was released. I like XP. Now to your primary question. I didn't notice any appreciable difference in the performance or system hit between Nis 2005/2006. My computer is very efficent and Norton runs very well, and being a complete suite that is a bonus. But I will admit that if you have an inefficient or older computer any of the new security suites are going to impact your performance. People ought to quite trying to tell people what antivirus they should run. If you want to tell how well your av runs on your computer that is fine. But it would make it much more peaceful if everyone would quit trying to convey that they have the best antivirus there is and you should uninstall yours and get theres right away. Simply because you don't have the best av there is for the simple reason your antivirus will not run on everyones computer like it does yours. It is great that your antivirus or security suite works well for you. But really enough is enough, and that includes me also, not any one else in particular just in general.

bigc

 

I'm running NAV 2006, and I don't see this BIG performance hit that some are talking about. My computer is performing very nicely with NAV 2006. Nothing bogging down, slowing down, or what ever.

 

I've been using NAV for 4 years and now I really am fed up with it. Last week I installed NAV 2006 and my system got bogged down, especially at startup. When I disabled the silly norton protection center, things seemed to be a little bit better with startup. Uninstalling NAV and installing bitdefender helps the system back to normal

 

I agree, and even say that some other Avs (known and widely appreciated avs) do slow my computer more, a lot more than norton did ...

 

Here's my 2 cents. My first experience was with NAV 2004. It was like a virus with how slow it ran on my PC. My dad bought NIS 2005 and put it on a 256MB computer. I was sitting at home laughing when he told me, thinking what a snail it must be. I was wrong it ran great. He just bought 2006 and that little PC is just speeding along, I am quite impressed with the suite. Since I want to go to a suite, I have asked for, and already know I am getting NIS 2006 for xmas. At least for the next year I will be a Norton user (never thought that I would say that!).

Best Regards

 

Hi Bigc, as you can see i have no experience at all with the 2006 versions yet,and thus not made my opinion yet.
The things that i have read about it, in the (for me trusted) reviews
all say that the new 2006 versions have lower impact on the system resources.

It would be nice if 2006 USERS could comment on that.
we planned testing it here within a few weeks.

And again, performance impact is just one (1) item,
that is important, but we would go off-topic if we discussed others.

And for the record, i don't talk about other AV's in this thread.

I just like to know how the actual users like/experience 2006 themselves.
and how it really performs compared with the previous versions

 

Thanks guys for the replies and especially for those who made an effort to keep this thread on topic. I appreciate that. I was simply asking for any performance differences that others may have found between NIS 2005 & 2006 as I have pretty much decided on getting the Symantec suite. Since it is a suite, I really was not interested in comparisons with stand alone AVs regardless of how great they are, they are differernt things. For those who were talking about Nod well I trialed Nod a few months back and while I realize it is a powerful AV, it is not a suite. I am looking for firewall, av, antispyware, etc all under one interface this time around. From what I have been reading alot of the security suites have really improved alot lately and with the yearly reoccurring costs for licensing many multiple vendor products, this whole security thing is just getting too expensive for me. My thoughts were if I could find an acceptable suite that had a decent av and firewall along with some antispyware and such for a reasonable price then it would be alot more worthwhile for me from a cost standpoint than buying a $39.99+ AV, $49.99+ firewall, $29.99+ spysweeper, etc. as opposed to a once a year $49.99 NIS package that covers all those seperate products for one price. Now I know before anyone starts saying the seperate products are going to be better. This for the most part I would probably agree but the benefit of the much better integration within the suite as well as the far lower cost to me outweighs the small performance benefit of the seperate products.

Well now thats said my whole intent of this thread was to compare only NIS 2005 & 2006 to make a decision on whether I will purchase the $39.99 year of defs for my current NIS 2005 package or to pay $10.00 more for the new 2006 suite upgrade.

Also I thought I would mention that I am currently running NIS 2005 and I have to say this product runs amazing light compared to previous Norton products I have tried over the years. I can say it is nearly amazing to me how well it runs and the fact it is a whole suite. So my real concern was if I bought the 2006 version would I lose the great performance 2005 has on my system now. This is also my secondary Internet machine, just an inexpensive HP laptop with a Sempron 2800+ and 512mb ram. Nothing fancy really.

One other thing I just saw on the Symantec site for NIS 2006. There is a statement where they mention what sounds to me like updates throughout the year of the product too and not just defs. Does anyone know if this is the case for 2006 versions?