Norton Antivirus download site

I have a certain policy when writing about a new product or service. That I won't write about it unless I have actually tried it out / experienced it myself.

Norton is a well known name in the anti virus market, even before it was bought over by Symantec. It has been one of the most popular anti virus brands for a long time.

I have downloaded and tried out the free Norton Antivirus 2007 Beta version from the Symantec website when detect any virus on my old computer (in Malaysia).

One great thing about Norton Antivirus 2007 is that besides viruses and worms, it also provides effective protection from spyware and malware. Thus you won't need to install another software for protection from these nasty stuff. In my computer, I have the free versions of Spybot and Ad-Aware installed and have to run them from time to time.

Other packages in the family include Norton Internet Security 2007 and Norton SystemWorks 2006. The later is actually a combination of 6 utility programs, namely, Norton AntiVirus, Norton GoBack, Norton Utilities, CheckIt Diagnostics, System Optimizer and Norton Ghost.

This finally brings me to one apparent disadvantage of this software. It was reported that the 2007 version is faster and lighter than their 2006 version, but a friend who bought the anti virus, informed me that there was a noticeable reduction in the performance of his computer after it was installed, meaning that this program hogs up a bit (or maybe more) of the RAM. His computer has the minimum specs (256MB of RAM). I am afraid to load it up on my ebay computer, which is already bogged down by all the software I have already loaded up. So you better have a lot more RAM than that in your PC, if you want it to run smoothly.

The review at the ZdNet site was quite favourable and the editors gave it a very good 7 out of 10.

To be honest, I am personally using the AVG antivirus (free version) from Grisoft and it does a pretty good job.

Tags: Anti virus Norton Symantec