Having improved a lot last year in Symantec's
flagship antivirus product, it makes sense we'd see
more modest enhancements for this year's Norton
AntiVirus 2008. While Norton AntiVirus 2008's
antivirus test results compare favorably to our
Editors' Choice winner
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7, it's the user experience
that suffers in this release. The final size, a
hefty 300MB, makes us wonder what's taking up all
that extra space--Norton AntiVirus 2008 is roughly
six times the file size as Kaspersky. Unlike
Kaspersky, Norton AntiVirus 2008 is only available
in a single-user license edition. Unlike Kaspersky,
Symantec provides Norton Antivirus 2008 users with little
explanation of its features or settings, either in
the configuration settings or on its technical
support section. Also we don't like Norton Antivirus
2008's
dependency on Internet Explorer to explain Help
items or services provided by Symantec (windows pop
up in IE even when Firefox is your default browser),
or that fee-based services have once again crept
into the technical support section. All of these
things distract the user and weigh the product down
in our minds. Your computer is safe with Norton
AntiVirus, it's just, do you really need all that
extra stuff installed as well?
Setup
Norton AntiVirus costs $39.99 for a single license.
By comparison, Panda Antivirus offers its three-user
license for the same price. While Kaspersky is
slightly more expensive, selling its single-user
license for $49.95, it offers a three-user license
for just $10 more. There are no three-user licenses
available for Norton AntiVirus 2008, so, if you have
two more computers in your home network, you'll have
to pay $40 for each computer.
Norton AntiVirus 2008
runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista, but not
Windows 2000 or any earlier version of Windows.
Norton AntiVirus 2008 requires at least 256MB of RAM
and a whopping 300MB hard drive (consuming roughly
six times the space of most of its 2008
competitors).
LiveUpdate, which used
to be a separate process, is now integrated into
Norton AntiVirus 2008--and about time. Once the
product is installed and you're asked to update,
everything--program files and signature
files--arrive on your desktop together, making the
experience smoother and easier. Symantec says this
year's LiveUpdate packets are more compressed.
Should you decide to
uninstall Norton AntiVirus 2008, there is an
uninstall option on the All Programs listing. This,
we discovered after contacting Symantec, does little
more than what Windows Add/Remove will do for you.
In other words, it won't necessarily remove all
traces of Norton AntiVirus 2008 from your PC. To do
so, you need to use the Norton Removal Tool.
According to Symantec, this Norton Removal Tool
"uninstalls all Norton 2008/2007/2006/2005/2004/2003
products and Norton 360 from your computer." The
difference, we were told, is that "the removal tool
will remove shared components, like LiveUpdate, even
if other Norton products that depend on the shared
component are installed."
Interface
If first impressions are everything, Norton
AntiVirus 2008 loses us at "Hello." The new
interface design is dark and garish, almost a
perverse joke on those seeking reassuring security
for their desktop. The use of ominous thick black
borders and orange graphics suggests Halloween, a
look that could get old by March. Unlike Kaspersky
and other antivirus applications, you can't change
the look and feel of Norton AntiVirus 2008. The
unfriendly look and feel is, perhaps, a deeper
metaphor for the overall lack of the configuration
settings within Norton AntiVirus 2008.
Our central problem is
that Norton Antivirus 2008 offers some wonderful features, but we
have no way of tweaking any of them. Drilling down
to the configuration settings we see "Turn on
Suspicious Activity Monitoring" or "Turn on
Bloodhound heuristics"--but do we really need these
features? Symantec provides us with very little
additional information (for example, the built-in
Help file says only "Turn on Bloodhound heuristics,"
not what it does), continuing with a practice
adopted long ago by Symantec of making decisions for
the user rather than presenting the user with
options. Then there's my favorite "Turn on Advanced
Mode" under the Suspicious Activity Monitor--it's
not on by default, so should we turn it on?
(Apparently the only difference between regular and
Advance Mode is that the Suspicious Activity Monitor
will log it in regular and alert you in Advanced
mode). Again, you have to accept that Norton has
your best interests in mind.
Kaspersky also uses
similar enable/disable options--that's really not at
issue here. The difference between the products is
that Kaspersky offers a thorough 323 page user's
manual explaining your choices where Norton does
not. Unless you are fluent in Symantec speak,
configuration options such as Bloodhound, Browser
Defender, and SONAR are meaningless. Nor can you
truly customize these in any meaningful way, with
few options to provide unique rules.
Symantec limits (if not
removes) a user's ability to customize and tweak
individual settings throughout Norton AntiVirus
2008; for example, there's no quick way to set
Norton Antivirus 2008 to only scan new or recently modified files.
Head-to-head, Kaspersky gives users more
enable/disable options.
We're also not keen on
Symantec's use of a large yellow block in the task
tray that says Norton all the time. While other
vendors have discrete icons, even icons that rotate
or blink, we found the constant advertisement in the
lower-right-hand corner visually distracting and
unnecessary. Norton AntiVirus 2008's popup alerts
were no bigger or smaller than its competitors.
Features
While there are few new features within Norton
AntiVirus 2008, most of Symantec's new protection
features are again reserved for the
Norton
Internet Security 2008 release.
One significant new
feature shared across both products is network
monitoring. Following advances made by Trend Micro
and others in past years, Norton AntiVirus 2008 now
creates one licensed user to be the local network
security administrator, allowing that user to
monitor the security of other computers on the
network, and, if necessary, run scans and updates on
those other computers. The caveat here is that the
other computers must also be running Norton
AntiVirus 2008 or Norton Internet Security 2008.
Also new is Browser
Defender. Like SONAR, a behavior-monitoring and
blocking feature acquired last year from a company
called Whole Security, Browser Defender, formerly
known as Canary, is a proactive heuristic layer that
specifically identifies signatures of known Internet
Explorer browser vulnerabilities and will block any
Symantec-known exploits. The idea behind Browser
Defender is that vulnerable browsers are the first
point of entry for many Web threats known as "drive
by" downloads, and that IE has a number of
outstanding public vulnerabilities. Problem is that
Browser Defender doesn't work for other browsers.
Firefox users are still out in the cold, despite
occupying up to 20 percent of the browser market. In
our informal tests, using only Internet Explorer,
one porn site in particular we use for testing was
flagged by other browser defenders as containing
several iframe referrers, but Norton did not so much
as peep about the Web Attacker content on that site.
While this is not an exhaustive test, it does
suggest that free browser scanners might be used in
addition to Norton. For Firefox (and even Internet
Explorer) users, we recommend the free download of
LinkScanner Lite as a second option on malicious Web
sites.
Another feature that's
important today keeps malware sent via IM from
infecting your PC. Norton AntiVirus 2008 does that,
but only if you have Microsoft (6.0 or higher) or
Trillian (3.1 or higher). If you have older versions
of the most popular IMs, AOL (4.7 to 5.9), Yahoo
(5.x and 6.x), you're golden, but both of these
products have updated significantly in recent
months. To test this, we installed Yahoo Instant
Messenger 8.1 and sure enough, Norton AntiVirus 2008
reported that we did not have any instant messengers
installed. Given that both AOL and Yahoo have
suffered large-scale attacks in recent months, it's
odd that Norton doesn't yet support the latest
versions of these.
What's missing? Symantec
beta tested another product this summer, however,
Norton Anti-Bot is not available in any of the
traditional 2008 Norton security products. At
$29.99, Norton Anti-Bot, which simply provides
signature and heuristic protection against botnets
taking residence on your desktop computer, is almost
the price of Norton AntiVirus 2008, and, as such,
simply is not worth it is a standalone product. We
look forward to Symantec including its anti-bot
technology in next year's release of Norton
AntiVirus.
Performance
Norton AntiVirus 2008 scored well in both our CNET
Labs' Windows XP performance tests and in
third-party, independent antivirus tests using live
viruses. On our iTunes test, Norton AntiVirus 2008
was in the middle of the pack, just 3 seconds above
our test system. On our Microsoft Office test,
Norton AntiVirus 2008 came in near the middle at
1,459 seconds. For scanning a single folder with
files, Norton AntiVirus 2008 came in near the middle
with 173 seconds. And in boot speed, Norton
AntiVirus 2008 came in last place, with a sluggish
40 seconds.
In terms of protecting
your PC, we cite results from two leading
independent antivirus testing organizations. In the
latest test results from AV-Comparatives.org, for
on-demand scans the previous version Norton
AntiVirus 2007 earned an Advanced + (the highest)
rating, catching 98 percent of all malware tested;
and for the Retrospective/Proactive test, the
previous version of Norton AntiVirus 2007 earned an
Advanced (second-highest) rating, detecting almost
half the backdoors, Trojans, and other malware
sampled. Norton AntiVirus 2007 received a Standard
rating from CheckVir.com, meaning only the virus
searching capability was examined.
CNET Labs will be
testing the antispyware in Norton AntiVirus 2008
separately, in October. Our suspicion is that Norton
AntiVirus 2008 will match last year's results and
finish fairly high in our ranking.
Conclusion
Although the antivirus protection is similar between
Norton AntiVirus and Karspersky, we give the nod to
Kaspersky again this year in part because of its
superior user experience. Symantec, despite its
efforts, still feels heavy, burdened by its own
corporate legacy and dependency on other Symantec
products. Also, it is not always clear what you are
enabling or disabling, clever way to keep users from
controlling the application themselves. And finally,
watch out for fee-based "premium" help and technical
support which once again finds its way back into the
product.
