| Norton AntiVirus 2010 |
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Last Updated
February 19, 2010 Editor's Rating 
 
Symantec is a big name in the computer security software business and one of their latest products, Norton AntiVirus 2010, is one of the core products available separately from their larger suites, Norton Internet Security and Norton 360. Norton AntiVirus 2010 is a good solution for users looking to get good virus and malware protection without all the bloat of larger security suites. The installation process for Norton Antivirus 2010 is fairly simple and straightforward. Just insert the CD, launch the installer, and follow the steps. After a few minutes, Norton AntiVirus 2010 will be installed successfully...as long as you don't have an already malware-infected computer. Having already existing malware on your computer can sometimes prevent the installation of security software. To get around this, when the Norton installer runs into this issue, it will pause installation and start a system scan to try to root out any malware and attempt to remove it before it resumes installation. In almost all cases, this will work and installation will continue without a hitch, but it can vary depending on the complexity of any existing malware on your computer. One other solution is users can boot directly from the installation CD (if you bought the retail version, but if you bought a download, you'll have to burn a bootable ISO) and run a recovery tool to try to remove any threats. If none of these things seem to help, Symantec does offer a rather pricey virus & malware removal service for $99. The Norton AntiVirus 2010 interface is similar to the other 2010 versions of Symantec's other security programs. It uses an orange/black color scheme and a main status screen that shows you to the current status of all the components to the program. From here you can easily see if there's any issues with any aspect of the program and any actions needed on the user's part.
Norton AntiVirus 2010 is comprised of two different technologies: SONAR 2 and Quorum. SONAR 2 looks to analyze installed programs for any suspicious activity. Quorum looks at each program installed on your system and compares them to a database of trusted and harmful programs. If Norton comes across a program that it doesn't have any information about, it will keep a more "watchful eye" on it by means of SONAR 2. Besides these two technologies, Norton AntiVirus 2010 also utilizes traditional signature-based virus and malware detection and removal.
Upon installation, Norton AntiVirus 2010 will schedule automatic quick and full system scans to run in the background while you use your computer. Keep in mind that the first scan performed will take a very long time because it will scan the complete system while any subsequent scans will only scan new and files that have changed since last scan. One potential issue with Norton AntiVirus 2010 is the lack of Web filtering, which would block access to known malware-hosting Web sites on the Internet. This is a feature that comes with Norton Internet Security & Norton 360. We really liked Norton AntiVirus 2010's ability to utilize system idle time to perform background work to help maintain system security. This results in the least amount of degradation of system performance because Norton will wait to use CPU power until you aren't actively using your computer. Overall, Norton AntiVirus 2010 is a fairly good program if you're looking for solid malware and virus protection without the bloat of larger security suites that include features like parental controls and file backup, which some users may not need. Because of this, it's a much cheaper price overall, but you do lose a few of the more advanced security features, like Web filtering.
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