Norton Antivirus Editor's Review

Protect your identity and your computer with this industry leading security tool.

Back in the day, the name Peter Norton brought a lot of credibility to the computing utility world. Today, anytime you use the name Norton, the first thing people think of is either Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet Security. Thankfully, in many cases, they are one in the same. Norton Antivirus is the foundation of NIS, and one of the best antivirus applications you can purchase today.

With plugins for Outlook and other email clients, Norton Antivirus is among the elite computer security applications available on the internet today. A turnkey application, NAV 2011 integrates with the browser of your choice, works flawlessly with all modern versions of Windows, and provides behind the scenes, continuous protection from bots, Trojans, worms and OS and productivity viruses designed to steal your personal, private, sensitive information.

Its sentry application sits unobtrusively in your System Tray and will scan the IP traffic going in and out of your active Ethernet adapter as well as the files being accessed on your computer. If it finds an active keylogger or Trojan or other virus attempting to activate, it will isolate it, and remove it from your PC.

Pros: Premier antivirus support, removes most every virus known, file behavioral monitoring can identify unknown or new viruses.

Cons: Subscription based. Difficult to remove if you want to stop using it.

Conclusion: With features like its SONAR 3 Behavioral Protection and Norton Pulse Updates, your computer is nearly impregnable as viruses are identified and removed before they really have a chance to take hold. Updated virus definitions are downloaded and installed automatically, so your computer always has the latest protection.  However, the application is very resource intensive, and legacy computers may have trouble performing at peak performance after the application is installed.