Sometime in November last year, Norton gave away copies of Norton Anti-Virus 2010 to all media and bloggers and its just this January I was able to install my copy since I already moved to Mac last year and I have no more laptop to install to. A good friend lent me his Lenovo Z460; a Core-i5 notebook installed with Windows 7, I intentionally borrowed it so I can make a mini review of this AV and also to experience the full 14″ laptop. I have not used a full laptop for the last two years or so.
Anyway, going down to business; the Norton Anti-virus was installed hassle-free in just a few minutes.
At first I was really hesitant to try and use this AV since the older versions of Norton AVs are not so friendly in terms of resources usage; instead of sitting there as your Mr. Safeguard, it becomes hassle as your systems slows down. But that was before, as in some five years back. The Norton Anti-Virus 2010 has been improved so much already.
The home screen shows you some helpful stats about the current state of your AV; the CPU resources that it uses and a few more.
The first thing you should do upon installation is to update the AV database; it downloads the latest update and you need to register too; you need a valid email address for this. After that, you are good to go.
As a rule of the thumb, I scanned first the laptop where I installed the AV, and I was not failed by Norton. It did find out some Trojans residing in the system. However I was almost dismayed when Microsoft Security Essentials was the first to find out about the Trojans, however Norton detected more than MS Essentials in the end of the full scan.
The next storage that I tried scanning was my 16G thumb drive, the same result was obtained and the experience is almost hassle-free. I did not notice any slowdown in my system, its as if my laptop is not doing anything. Again, this is basing from my experience long way back.
The next step I did was to upgrade it to 2011 version. You just need to download it from the Norton website and install, it will update your version to the latest one. The added feature is that you can now scan your Facebook wall which is the cool part.
Like any other apps that you allow in your Facebook; this one needs the same installation. Since you see a lot of unidentified links being shared in your wall; Norton AV will handle scanning of that. Scanning will have to be done from the Norton Anti-virus screen not from your Facebook.
So far, so good. It does the job and it runs very “quite” in the system, meaning it does not affect the speed of your notebook or PC. My only comment is that its main screen should have been designed simple. You don’t need so much graphics for an Anti-virus so long as it does the job done very well.
