 Norton Antivirus 2005: reliable or not?
Added: 03/12/2006 |
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Norton AntiVirus company was established in 1990, and according to the latest reviews more than 100 million people all over the world have tried it at least once. The first modifications of Norton AntiVirus have inherited much from CPAV (Central Point Anti-Virus), which was bought by Symantec in 1994. Microsoft corporation has build in Central Point Anti-Virus into its Anti-Virus utility.
Norton AntiVirus (Symantec Security Check, also shortened as NAV) is one of the leading products of Symantec Inc., one of the most popular and reliable anti-virus programs. The latest version of NAV is Norton AntiVirus 2006.
The key features of the product are: automatic virus, Trojan horses, worms removal; incoming and outgoing email scanning. Norton AntiVirus 2005 checks compressed file archives as .zip, .rar, .tar, gzip, etc. for viruses, guards your personal computer from Internet worms, blocking them up before they start infecting your system. PreInstall Scan reveals and deletes infections that can prevent Norton AntiVirus from installing and launching.
Though many customers have used it, Norton Antivirus is often claimed to be not efficient enough, buggy, slow and complicated for simple users. Problems with the program's deinstallation have also been reported. Professional investigations have proved that viruses still affect personal computers ignoring the fact that Norton AntiVirus 2005 is installed and the latest antivirus databases downloaded.
Additionally, the graphical user interface of Norton Antivirus is not intuitive enough and loads very slowly, especially on older computers, being executed via Internet Explorer's HTML engine. Norton AntiVirus was criticized in the past because of Symantec's policy according to which the program leaves spyware (backdoors, keyloggers, etc.) of the FBI and the CIA undetected.
In 2005 there was an investigation by the Washington Post proving that Norton Antivirus 2005 has one of the slowest response times for malicious code detection (the famous out-brakes in 2005),unable to seriously compete with such monsters of antivirus software production as: Kaspersky, F-Secure, McAfee, Trend Micro, F-Prot, AVG, Avast! and Panda.
The tastes and opinions differ as we know. Some experts describe Norton Antivirus as the top antivirus, while many others regard it as sluggish and unprofessional. This can be explained as follows: many serious companies have so-called "promotional sites" which are formally independent but in fact belong to one or another company that uses the site to promote its products. On the opposite, the competitors of some company can develop websites with the information about their rivals, which can be incorrect or discreditable.
Just as an example, main site of the Symantec Corporation announces Norton AntiVirus 2005 to be the world's most trusted antivirus program and one of the best products in its class. At the same time, Download.com rates Norton AntiVirus 2005 "4" (out of 5) and the users of the same site give it only "2.5" (also out of 5). Another professional reviewer, CNet.com, rated Norton AntiVirus 2006 as 5.5 out 10 while its users rated the product even worse: an even worse: 3.2 out of 10 points possible.
So, reading reviews is a nice thing, but don't be too credulous. The best way out is to use a trial version of a product and form your own opinion about it.
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