I wrote a post in December praising Avast! for offering a great security suite for free and I wasn't very kind to Symantec or McAfee for their bloated security suites that they offer for a yearly fee. I've never had a problem with Symantec's anti-virus, I've used their corporate versions for years and was happy with the one that I owned up until recently as it has gotten pretty old and I really didn't want to buy another corporate version; version 9 that I had did not detect spyware so I was continuously running other programs to remove them. I then switched to Avast! and was happy as it did its job and was free.
I'm still running Windows XP as I really don't care for Vista at all, so the firewall is one directional, meaning that it would stop incoming probes and other nasties from getting in from the internet but if you get Malware on your PC the firewall does nothing to stop information from going out. A firewall is one feature that Avast! does not have and with XP you really should have one to protect any information from going out to whoever wrote the Malware. One way to fix this is to buy a firewall like Zonealarm, which I used many years back and is still rated very highly, or you can buy a security suite with a firewall built in to it.
I was reading one of my favorite magazines called Maximum PC one day and they had a roundup of most of the new Security Suites on the market. All of the big boys were there like McAfee, Symantec (Norton), Kapersky, Avast! and others. This magazine is all about horsepower and anything that bogs a system down gets severely spanked since this magazine is geared for PC gamers. They gave Norton a 9 out of 10 which really intrigued me as they haven't been to kind to them in the past and I haven't really cared for their Suite packages either. NIS 2009 was on sale at Staples and I had a $25 off coupon that was expiring so I decided to go pick it up and give it a try.
The main reason that made me take a second look at NIS was that Symantec has totally re-written this program from the ground up, something the other companies should consider. NIS 2009 literally took less than a minute to install, I looked away for a minute and when I looked back it was done, I thought it has crashed to be honest. I was amazed that I noticed no drop in system performance, which really does surprise me still. I have to say that I am very happy with this purchase after almost a month. I put the spyware to the test by not running any other spyware detection software like Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes for nearly three weeks, relied totally on NIS to remove them. NIS removes these automatically, so you don't have to worry about running anything. After three weeks I ran both Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes, I was surprised that neither program found one piece of spyware on my computer.
Scanning is really great, this program chews through your hard drive in no time. One great feature is that once you do a full scan the program keeps track of every file that has changed and only checks the changed files on the next scan which shortens the scan time down to a few minutes. NIS now has pulse updates, which allows Symantec to get virus definitions out to you right away when a new bug shows up.
The firewall is great too, the old days of having a box pop up all time asking you what you wanted to do are over. I always found those pop-ups really annoying, especially when you had to ask the firewall for more information on the program that wanted access, only to find out that it's a normal system file that normally accesses the network. Anyways, NIS has a really intelligent firewall that has taken that burden off of us, no more having to choose between allow once or always allow. I haven't had to grant access to any program yet, the only reason that I know that it's working is that I clicked on a file that was a Trojan that tried to access the internet and NIS stopped it in its tracks with a little pop-up telling me that I was an idiot for clicking on that file.
I've even fallen in love with the password vault, I've never bothered with them before but I really like them now. I've always let Firefox keep track of my logins for websites, but I like the fact that these are encrypted and require you to type a password once when you first pull up your browser; this keeps the kids from using your login information when you aren't looking. I also like the fact that you can back the database up just in case. The credit card vault works that same way and is pretty handy if you do a lot of online shopping.
NIS does have anti-spam as well for email, but I don't have this turned on at the moment so I can't give it a review. I have read that it's not the greatest and needs some work, I use Outlook and it does fine for me in getting rid of spam.
In conclusion, I give this program a thumbs up. I'm very pleased with the speed of Norton Internet Security 2009 and have been recommending it for the past couple of weeks to anyone that is looking for a new anti-virus. NIS has done its job by stopping all of the spyware that the other well known anti-spyware programs I've used to remove spyware, I still test NIS every so often just to make sure and have yet to have one issue. I have to say that this conclusion was not easy for me to write as I have been very negative about Symantec and McAfee's security suites for years, but I have to swallow my pride and admit that Symantec has done a great job with NIS 2009. NIS 2009 works great with online games as well, I've put it through the ringer with a few different First Person Shooters and MMO's. If you want a free security suite I still recommend Avast!, even though Maximum PC beat them up pretty good for being slow (it still does the job well); but, if you want a great anti-virus suite and don't mind spending the money I highly recommend NIS 2009. I've seen NIS 2009 at Costco for $49.99 and can be installed on three PC's which brings the cost down to around $17/year per machine, if you have that many.
I do want to add that I can't compare the other programs like Kasperky as I don't have the new versions, if you are using any of the other programs I'd love some feedback. I'm sure the other programs are great as well and do what they are designed to do, otherwise they wouldn't be the top contenders in a magazine round-up. I would certainly do your own investigation to find the right software that fits your needs, I google everything before I buy it and read what other people have to say to help me in my decision.
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