The Bottom Line
Norton AntiVirus is best suited for newer systems with large amounts of available drive space and plenty of memory.
Pros
- Live Update feature to keep definition files automatically updated
- Rescue disk creation during installation
- Repair Wizard to handle hard to clean files
Cons
- Requires extensive system resources
- Lengthy installation and setup
- Slow scan speeds
Description
- LiveUpdate keeps definitions automatically up-to-date. (See note in review).
- Norton AntiVirus 2002 automatically scans 175 file types.
- Norton AntiVirus 2002 has compatibility issues with top-rated ZoneAlarm firewall.
Guide Review - Norton AntiVirus 2002
While Norton AntiVirus scores very well in AV-Test.org examinations with both zoo and in-the-wild viruses, unless the system it is to be installed upon has plenty of hard drive space, memory, and a fast processor, users might be better off with some of the less intrusive products on the market.
Norton AntiVirus 2002 provided stellar performance on a P4 with 256Mb of RAM and over 20Gb of available hard disk storage. Conversely, on a P3 with 64Mb of RAM and less than 100Mb of available hard disk storage (after installation), adverse performance impact was quite noticeable. If your system can handle it, Norton provides very good protection.
Note: LiveUpdate checks for an Internet connection every 5 minutes and every 4 hours after one is found. This may result in large phone bills for ISDN users.
