Quite a few years ago I uninstalled Norton AntiVirus in complete disgust as it slowed my PC down to the point where it was almost as bad as having an actual virus.

But recently, while chatting to some of guys from Symantec, they assured me that they had seen the error of their ways & that their new product, Norton 360, had a nice light footprint. Perhaps I even snorted in disbelief – but even so, they sent me a copy to test.

I installed Norton 360 on 12 July and have had it running since. I do not even notice it is there unless it pops up to give a warning.  I’ve even been moved to tweet about how much this amazes me (especially given the crappy-ness of the old version a few years ago). At first the warnings popped up a lot, but once the settings were re-tuned all was well.

Strangely enough, it seems that the folks at Norton have actually done what they claim.  It has a light footprint, is easy to use and it runs as well as or slightly better than my previous security product (Nod32).

Behind the scenes is all the detailed tracking information about intrusion attempts and updates that a pro would want.  But all the complexity is nicely abstracted and hidden from the average user. A few other neat features also included in addition to security are:

• backup
• identity protection
• PC scan

From the average user’s perspective these other features of Norton 360 can make managing a PC a much easier job.  The bad news for the family geek is that I can see that the task of setting all of this up will probably still fall upon their shoulders.

I’m still exploring the capabilities of the identity protection & will post about that later. Just about to run my first backup and will let you know if it beats Carbonite (my incumbent provider).

Up until now I’ve been using Nod32 as it had a lighter footprint that most of the other anti-virus products around.  But based on this experience to date Norton 360 is well and truly back on the list, especially for non-geek users.