Symantec launches new gamer’s-friendly Norton Antivirus 2009
My friends at Symantec shot me a note about their new edition of Norton Antivirus so I thought I'd share – everyone, say hello to Norton Antivirus 2009 Gaming Edition SP1 R2 for Workgroups. Awwww, how cute.
For those that would rather not read, watch this cute clip of an ex-McAfee user (John4356783) sharing his sob story of having lost a flag to the infamous Scheduled Scan of Doom, shaming himself, his family, and his squad.
Seriously though, I haven’t had time to sit down and dissect the Norton Antivirus 2009 product SKUs to determine if there really are any true (internal) differences but here are some marketing highlights to gargle this morning:
- New Gamer Mode keeps you protected but won’t bother you while you’re in the middle of a game. Suspends updates, alerts, and other background activities and is automatically enabled when system is in full screen mode, or easily manually enabled;
- Performance driven release installs in under a minute, uses less than 6MB memory, adds less than 1 second to boot time and averages scans in less than 35 seconds. See the report yourself.
“Gamers are an extremely demanding audience that simply won’t tolerate anything on their system that detracts from gameplay,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Products, Symantec. “Norton AntiVirus Gaming Edition keeps gamers protected online and runs perfectly undetected in the background, meaning no interruptions, no pop-ups, and with the same award winning zero-impact performance of our 2009 products.”
I know what you’re thinking -- “oh God, bloatware”, but bite your tongue. I took one for the team a month or so ago and installed their new all-encompassing suite of applications, which includes Norton Antivirus 2009, and I was truly shocked at how well it ran.
While I’m not a fan of the owner-drawn GUI and all the gross newbie graphics and enormous plastic buttons, I can say it does what it’s supposed to do and does it without making a mess. The Don’t-Bother-Me-While-I’m-Busy-Damnit™ mode is classic too.
Symantec: This is a good start at winning back your Peter Norton fans from back in the day.
Readers: Give their 2009 line of products a shot. I’m serious. You too Thurrott.
If only we could return to the look and feel of Norton Utilities 6.0... Sigh.
What’s the advantage of scheduled virus scans anyway? Isn’t the scan-on-write approach sufficient?
You’d think so… But hey, I haven’t used any protection (online) in about 2 years now. Not even a firewall. Hah. Not a hitch.
I’ve installed NAV 2009 on a few customer units at work… and it doesn’t seam all that bad. I mean, the HUGE buttons and stuff are kinda distracting, but the fact it starts up directly after install without needing to restart is kinda cool. Haven’t tried it myself but I think I might.
Yeah… I’d much rather install this then Kaspersky… which apparently needs to restart TWICE during install? Although that may have just been that particular install.
Why is there a ‘Gaming Version’ anyway? Shouldn’t these features just be in the normal app – or are there people out there who like AV programs that slow down their PC’s to the point of wanting to reformat?
I use Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, i was never dissapointed of him, but i preffer BitDefender IS 2009 :( too bad because does not working on Windows 7 Build 6801.
Really? i havent tried an antivirus for more than 10 years…
Wow, your gunna get pwned if you have norton of any type. symantic there perent company makes a nice light-weight AV, AVG makes a nice one too. just anything but norton. makes you look like a faggot
AVG is so bloated with their latest release. LinkScanner is a mess… They have gone the capitalist way to sell their paid product to make a living. Why not just take a chance to go commando with no AV?
Matthijs van der Vleuten: I can only imagine it makes the uninformed customer happy because they see it working.
Chuck: I eventually had to uninstall AVG. It has compatibility problems with Valve games (I kept getting random server disconnects with errors that couldn’t possibly have occurred in Team Fortress 2) and Microsoft Office 2007 (I couldn’t open any documents, it was 100% broken). It also installs some sort of networking driver layer (presumably this is what broke Team Fortress 2) EVEN if you did NOT install the networking components of AVG at install time.
Once I uninstalled AVG my computer sped up immediately and noticeably (I had noticed a performance drop but hadn’t linked it to AVG, especially since the AVG processes weren’t taking up the CPU. Must have been taken up by Deferred Procedure Calls (I believe Process Explorer constantly showed 5-10% CPU usage there) or it was hurting disk performance rather than the CPU.
Considering anti-virus products I’ve used have never actually found any viruses, my computer’s security is about the same. I’ll stick with manual virus scans every so often with ClamWin.
A zero-footprint anti-virus would definitely be enticing to me, but not enough to subscribe for it. I hate subscription model software. You buy it but then you get back to square one after the subscription ends with nothing to show for it (I don’t like the idea of renting an apartment, either). Also given Norton’s track record for slowing down computers, even with this praise, I’m going to avoid them. Forever.
I don’t suppose anyone has benchmarked some free AV scanners (especially on slower CPUs) and found one with zero footprint, especially to the point where a gamer like myself could use it without sacrificing framerate on an already too-slow CPU…
A. AntiVir is 100% more effective and makes 100x less impact than any norton i’ve ever used.
B. The fact they want to reduce to 7mb footprint is a great move but stop f*cking calling it a gamer edition, every fu*king edition of norton is too bloated and needs to be cut back tot he bare essentials!
Now Kaspersky needs to cut down like this, its detection is so good but memory consumption is increasing by the day. Btw, did Norton do this across its entire product line? SystemWorks (esp NU) was so good once upon a time, but then got bloated. And does LiveUpdate also run transparently (not just automatically) and behind the scenes?
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Wow. That is a rather lame advertisement. I would be interested in giving it a whirl but I will be sticking with my NOD32.
I am surprised to see the claim of NOD32 using 32MB of RAM but that is actually true with my system; 33MB actually. Still it is loaded instantly, dosen’t slow the system and never interrupts me so just a few more reasons not to switch.
I am now Using Norton Too. It has really improved a lot and gives good protection without slowing down the system.
Hi there,
I have been using Norton Anti Virus Gaming edition since shortly after it was released (when exactly I don’t remember anymore, surely must have been 3 months at least). I really have to say, that I am impressed with this one. Hasent given me any problems so far, and for the time being i don’t intend to changing AV’s anytime soon.
Norton youve got at least one happy customer here!
Regards
I use bitdefender gamesafe, it is the best. I also found a website where you can get bitdefender gamesafe with 40% off the price. Here: http://www.bitdefendergamesafeservers.com/ . It’s just 14.97$ :)
I have to admit, I have never been a fan of Norton since they came out with the “pretty” UI that began the history of bloating systems and killing bandwidth. But with the 9 release, I have to say it is seamless with systems. I even installed it on my 4 year old dell, thing is smooth as when I didn’t even have one installed. They have come a long way with this release. I would go as far to say it rivals NOD32, which I am a huge fan of.
Added to that, you get 3 licenses per. So, 3 for 1 and little footprint, I am sorry to say I am a fan at this point. The gamer edition idea? Who knows. I think it is a way to get those without any AV into the symantec pocket. But who am I to guess at it? I am using internet security ‘09.
BTW, the updates are lightning fast…especially compared to ‘08 and earlier. A full update from install takes about 15 seconds on my system.