Norton Internet Security 2011 Review

Interface
norton Internet Security 2011 is full of some changes to its interface; however the design is heavily suggestive of the earlier versions. It keeps the black dark theme, organized by yellow text. There are good numbers of options in the interface which make it a little crowded. You can find a lot of options sent to the taskbar and the taskbar icon.

Below each category are several controls specific to that area of protection. So, under computer protection, there are text buttons for instantly initiating a scan, for forcing a virus database update, for accessing your History or Quarantine, and for viewing Application Ratings.

Security controls have been condensed into three sections in the main window:

1. Computer protection.
2. Network protection
3. Web protection.

In each category there is a series of controls that regular user can use to handle their application. These controls are active by default. The gold indicator moves to the right and changes color to red to demonstrate that it's been deactivated. The option of deactivating is not limited to regular deactivation but it has a timer for deactivation. This timer gives the merit of extra security in case you forget to reactivate any option that you decided to deactivate for some time. If you click on the name of any control button, such as antivirus, a pop-up will appear summarizing what the feature does.

Ease of Usage:

The visual of the program is very attractive and helpful for the novice user but it contains a lot of irrelevant stuff for your security. At the bottom of the screen you can find a big yellow dark map of the world. This dark yellow world map shows yellow dots that according to Symantec shows yellow flashes when Norton antivirus blocks a threat to one of its user in the location of the dot. More attention-grabbing is that below the map there are a series of mobile application style buttons. From there you can access Norton Online Family which is:

1. Norton Online Backup.
2. Norton Safe Web

The options for scan are:

1. Quick scan.
2. Full system scan.
3. Custom scan for viruses and malware.

A new feature added is that Norton can scan your Face book wall for malicious links. There are also on-demand reputation-based quick scans, full scans, and custom scans for users who want Norton to immediately scan their installed programs.

Norton provides the user after any scan with a full detailed report of the scan progress and the scan time. More-detailed information, including scan duration and a deeper dive into threats exposed, can be read under the History option from the main window. There's also a link so that you can follow in case you believe that Norton missed something in its scan, although as the reputation-based protection full-grown, the need for on-demand scanning develop into less of an matter when measured up to with the "always-on" protection.

Installation
As a new modification which basically is new from two years ago only, the new Norton beast comes with an installation package which is handy and fast. As you run the installer, the program is ready to operate in about a minute which is impressive especially with Norton previous installation bad experiences. The speed is double considering past performance. The installation process is also the first time that you will interact with Quorum, Norton's behavior-based detection engine. The user will be asked to contribute by sending anonymous data to Symantec's shade. Sitting data submission out, according to Symantec, will not affect your security.

The firewall and web protection engines unfortunately haven't been upgraded or updated. This was a big down for new enthusiasts for the Norton 2011. At the same time, users have to put in mind that the firewall and the web protection were very effective in the previous versions and blocked all the intrusions. Web protection blocks all web exploits of websites and enhances browser security.

The new Norton adds only 109 MB to the user ram and consumes around 2 seconds of boot time which is barely noticed when the processor is warming up at the beginning. The program is light and better than previous versions.

Conclusion: Norton 2011 is one of the top internet security software available in the market. Armed with a strong history of excellence along with huge modifications to the interface and the program load on windows it is for sure a good choice for your PC.