How many of you are annoyed by pop-ups from your Internet security software? What about the time it takes to install? I think you know where I’m going with this. Inevitably you’re running virus protection from Symantec or McAfee. I know when I was using a PC it was Symantec and it would piss me off. The constant pop-ups asking me to upgrade or verify that it’s ok for it to run something in the background. Whatever the case was I hated it and wanted it to die. Bring on the malware, I didn’t care.
When Norton contacted me last week about their new security software for ’09, I merely scoffed and said, “whatever.” But I’m happy to report that I changed my mind and I’m glad I did. Norton has made vast improvements to their ’09 software and the statistics they gave were astounding. Now before you go and do what I did, hear me out.
Install time for both is under one minute. Tested on a Windows Vista machine with a Core 2 Duo 6300 processor and 1GB of RAM the software installed in 52.77 seconds. Memory usage is also pretty low at about 5MB. Boot time is tops in the industry at 33.74 seconds. Results may vary, but they’re not trying pull one over on you either.
Here’s what’s new with 2009:
Norton Insight helps cutdown on scanning time because systems with Norton installed sort of act like a P2P network, so that widely known files like Firefox don’t have to be scanned each go around. There’s a white list and a database of sorts that keeps tracks of commonly known or used files. This is a very generic description of what’s going on and certainly isn’t meant to be the end all of explanations.
There’s also “smart scheduling” and a “silent mode” that help alleviate the irritations you once felt with previous generations or other security software. The software detects when you’re in fullscreen mode such as games, movies, or presentations and subsequently does not notify you during these periods. Tasks are usually initiated when the computer is idle and stops when it becomes active again.
And last of all is the free support you get with 2009 products. That encompasses all platforms whether it be over the phone or live chat.
Now on to the good stuff. Last weekend Norton held a press conference in Las Vegas where they put a handful of journalists onto a Zero G flight including myself. It was hands down one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had. Being weightless and floating around was crazy. Just watch the video.
Watch this one too of me and Chris Pirillo, Ponzi Pirillo, and iJustine generally nerding out. They warned us that we’d be giddy as little kids before hand, but I don’t think any of us believed them.
So what’s the HUGE CONTEST? Well, one of you lucky son-of-a-guns is going to have a chance to win a seat on one of those flights come February 2009. Stick around for contest details.