Norton Antivirus Review
Who does not know Norton by Symantec? Anyone who has been using a computer since a little while, knows that Norton is a well known antivirus and security product for home computers and business computers. It is a global brand and has customers from all over the world, its a global product. I'm writing this Norton antivirus review to fully demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of Norton security products. Mind it, this review is not just to touch the basics. This review will explore all the capabilities of the software and provide ratings in comparison to other security products available out there. We will also show the results of our tests conducted on lab computers.
Norton Antivirus Overview
It goes back to the year 1995 when I bought my first computer system. Back then I did not know anything about Symantec or Norton. Since new to computers, I got my computer infected with one of the most popular virus of all times: the Michelangelo virus. Michelangelo would override everything on a hard drive on specified dates. A variation of Stoned with much crueler intentions, Michelangelo was probably the first computer virus that made international news. Can't say that I was proud of the infection but was certainly proud to find Norton antivirus which eliminated the virus from my computer. That's when I got to know about Symantec and their security software Norton.
Norton is the oldest company that produced robust antivirus and security software. The company goes back to the year 1991 when they released their security products. With years of experience in the computer security world, Norton has established themselves as the best security software provider for home users and the business users. Norton is popular in both the segments: home user group and business/enterprise segment. The only concern nowadays users have is that Norton slows down a computer. While I do not agree with this fact but we need some proof to know it for truth. I have conducted certain tests to know if Norton does what it promises while staying gentle with the system resources.
Norton Antivirus Speed Test
When someone says that a product is the best, there should be a proof for such a claim. So we ran some tests on the Norton products to provide ratings of the software on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 is the best score). We installed the Norton security on one of our lab computers to see its impact on the system resources. Here is some data that we can compare to see if the Norton security has any adverse effect on the system performance post-installation. We have used industry leading computer benchmarking software to test the speed and performance of different major components of the computer system.
System performance before installing Norton Security on the computer:
In the above test results, the CPU speed was 7270 MIPS, it could process 7270 million instructions per second. The memory speed was 3090 Megabytes per second. Hard drive speed was 16.8 Megabytes per second and 2D video speed was 8.67 MP/s (processing millions of pixels per second). When the Norton antivirus was fully installed, we ran the same test again to check if there is any difference in the performance scores.
System performance after installing Norton Security on the computer:
In the above test results, the CPU speed has changed to 7120 MIPS in comparison to the older 7270 MIPS, that's a very small difference in the CPU performance post-installation. The Memory speed has dropped to 2970 MB/s from 3090 MB/s, thats again a marginal difference. The Hard drive speed has decreased to 14.7 in comparison to the older 16.8 MB/s reading. The 2D video speed has dropped down from 8.67 to 6.37 MP/s.
System performance ratings comparison before and after installing Norton:
| Component | Before Install | After Install |
| CPU | 7270 | 7120 |
| Memory | 3090 | 2970 |
| Hard Drive | 16.8 | 14.7 |
| Video | 8.67 | 6.37 |
CONCLUSION OF THE TEST: The Norton test results actually amazed me! Comparing the speed/performance tests we conducted earlier on the previous versions of Norton, the new version 2013 performed very well. The software has been improved to use lower system resources so that the system performance is not affected. Norton antivirus earned a fascinating score and ranked very well in comparison to many other antivirus and security software. It completely outperformed some of the well known software like the ESET which used to be the fastest antivirus software earlier. Norton earns 9 out of 10 scores in the speed test!
Norton Antivirus Stealth Test
To earn the best scores, an antivirus software should be able to detect and remove all of the viruses, malware and trojans. We tested Norton Antivirus heavily by installing it on our virus infected lab computer. Our lab computer was infected by some of the high threat level viruses, trojan and spyware. The installation was successful on this computer system. We tried to update the Norton antivirus and tried to download the latest signatures but the internet connection was knocked off because of the severe infection. However, when we ran a fully system scan, Norton detected all of the infected files and viruses.
Norton successfully detected all of the infection and provided necessary help to remove or quarantine the infected files. There were a couple of trojans that we were unable to remove in the normal Windows mode. So we started the computer in Safe Mode and then removed all the remaining infection. We also had to download a couple of tools from the Norton website to remove infection. The awesome technology provided in the Norton Antivirus software helped us to remove all the infection and thus, Norton wins a score of 9 out of 10 ratings!
CONCLUSION OF THE TEST: Norton antivirus performed outstanding in the stealth test by eliminating all the virus, trojans and malware from the computer. Even though we had to start the computer in safe mode to remove the remaining infection, still we think that Norton products are outstanding and provide the best security for a computer without slowing it down. Norton earns 9 out of 10 ratings in the stealth test!
Overall Test Results
| Speed/Performance Test | Scored 9 out of 10 |
| Stealth Test | Scored 9 out of 10 |
| Strength Test | Scored 9 out of 10 |
Norton Antivirus Screenshots
