Nope, it ain't, and that there were many claims that <a href="http://www.symantec.com/norton/internet-security" target="_blank">NIS 2009</a> was not as resource intensive as previous versions was the only reason I gave it a try.
NIS 2008 nearly crashed my system, and many previous versions of Norton AntiVirus actually have crashed my systems. Norton has, historically, been the problem child of the antivirus world. It has a reputation for being a resource pig.
But Fahim installed <a href="http://www.symantec.com/norton/internet-security" target="_blank">NIS 2009</a> and reported having no problems with it and, more to the point, reported that it took up much less RAM than previous versions. So, knowing that my notebook with 1/4 the RAM of Fahim's would be the real test, I decided to install it and give it a try.
<a href="http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/" target="_blank">Comodo</a> Firewall used up about 38MB of RAM during ordinary usage. <a href="http://free.avg.com/nl-nl/homepage" target="_blank">Free AVG Antivirus</a> used about 50-58MB of RAM. that gives a total of around 88-96MB of RAM.
Compare that to <a href="http://www.symantec.com/norton/internet-security" target="_blank">NIS 2009</a>, which is both firewall and antivirus, running at 8MB of RAM. 0_o
One tenth? If it had been half Comodo and AVG, I would have been happy. But this? It's astounding. And evidently, all that work that Norton put into redesigning their software so it was more efficient and used less resources paid off. In spades.
I've been using NIS 2009 for two weeks now, and it's worked pretty well. A few curses, but nothing more than any other program. All in all, it's been working very well, not crashing my system, not hogging all the RAM or CPU power - just doing its job and doing it well.
I have but two complaints.
<b>One</b>. When it does background tasks, an alert window will pop open. Sometimes, it won't go away until I either reboot or use a process explorer to kill it (it can't be killed through Windows Task Manager).
<b>Two</b>. NIS 2009 automatically moves to quarantine all files/programs/components that it deems high risk. This is not an option. It cannot be turned off, a user does NOT have the option of making decisions about how to handle high risk items. They are moved to quarantine, period.
This would not be a problem if NIS 2009 didn't have false positives, but it does. That's not so much a problem for the average user, but over here, we're not average users. We use beta software, we use software that Fahim wrote, we use open source stuff... You get the idea.
And sometimes, this perfectly legitimate software is flagged as high risk and is moved to quarantine without so much as a...
NIS 2009 does allow a person to set exceptions and to restore things from quarantine, but it can be a bit convoluted and complicated to get it done. Pain in the butt.
Fahim contacted Norton to find out if there was a way around this, but he was told no, and even though he asked for his query to be escalated to a supervisor and requested a response, hasn't had one. Two weeks ago.
I understand that, for the average computer user, giving options is not necessarily a good thing - they might make the wrong choice or, worse, not now how to make an informed choice. But we're not average users. We're geeks, Fahim more so than I. We know how to make informed choices. We know how to do whatever research is necessary. We're on the end of hardcore users, again, Fahim more so than I.
We want the option of making that decision. We want to be able to use whatever software we want without having major hassles installing it, i.e., the files disappearing. Or without having to disable NIS 2009 in order to get a program to install.
So it's back to me wanting to use software the way I want to use it, not the way the software manufacturers think I should use it.
<a href="http://www.symantec.com/norton/internet-security" target="_blank">NIS 2009</a>, with the much much much smaller and more than reasonable resource usage, is a winner That it hasn't crashed my system or caused any kind of even remotely noticeable slowdown in two weeks of usage is a major plus. If NIS 2009 would give me the option of choosing what to do with what it considered high risk problems, then I would consider it nearly perfect. :)
It works well enough that we're switching over permanently. Or as permanently as it ever gets with Fahim. :)
