Reviewed by: Robert Vamosi (Reviewed on 11/28/07    Release date: 8/28/07)

We were definitely not wowed this year by Symantec's Internet security offering; in fact, it feels a like a step backward to products the company offered years ago. Norton Internet Security 2008 offers top-notch security tools for today's threats, but its tools do not always integrate well, nor are they adequately explained. In at least one scenario, we were able to turn off one security feature only to have another security feature prompt us to provide personal information to a fraudulent Web site--while Symantec declined to call it a flaw, we differ.

Also, with Norton Internet Security 2008, we experienced more than one system slowdown associated with the Symantec LiveUpdate process, further dampening our enthusiasm for the product. And we were very disappointed to see paid services once again promoted within the technical support section. Norton Internet Security 2008 falls well short of our high expectations for a market leader and only manages a "good" recommendation from CNET.

1. Installation and platform requirements

Windows Vista® Home Basic/Home Premium/Business/Ultimate

Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 Home/XP Pro/XP Media Center Edition

300MHz or higher processor

256MB of RAM

350MB of available hard disk space


Email scanning supported for POP3 and SMTP compatible email clients.
Supported instant messenger clients:

AOL® – 4.7 to 5.9

Yahoo!® – 5.x and 6.x

Microsoft® – 6.0 or higher

Trillian™ – 3.1 or higher

Internet browsers (phishing protection)

Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6.0 (32-bit only) or higher

Mozilla® Firefox® 2.0 or higher

 

Norton Internet Security 2008 currently costs $69.95 for a three-user license. By comparison, McAfee Internet Security 2008 currently protects three users for $69.95 and includes protection for mobile devices (something Norton does not). Kaspersky Internet Security offers its three-user license for $79.95.

Norton Internet Security 2008 only on Windows XP and Windows Vista. McAfee and Kaspersky both run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Norton Internet Security 2008 requires at least 256MB of RAM and a whopping 350MB hard drive. Symantec does offer a full function 15-day trail of Norton Internet Security 2008.

LiveUpdate, which used to be a separate process, is now integrated into Norton Internet Security 2008--and about time. Once the product is installed and you're asked to update, everything--program files and signature files--arrive on your desktop together, making the experience smoother and easier. Symantec says this year's LiveUpdate packets are more compressed. Unfortunately, you'll be asked to reboot our machine with each new update but we experienced other problems with the new LiveUpdate process.

Over the years we'd heard from people who'd had performance issues with Norton products but we hadn't recently experienced any performance issues ourselves--until now. More than once while reviewing Norton Internet Security 2008, our Dell XPS machine running Windows XP froze. During the freeze events, our Windows Task Manager revealed that aupdate.exe (Symantec's LiveUpdate service) was stuck, consuming more than 50 percent of our system resources. After waiting a few minutes--assuming the update would complete on its own--we were still unable to use the desktop and, worse, were unable to shut down the system without a hard reboot. Symantec says they haven't heard any consumer complaints like ours.

Should you decide to uninstall Norton Internet Security 2008, there is an uninstall option on the All Programs listing, but we found it wasn't perfect. The uninstall option, according to Symantec, is no more effect ive than the Windows Add/Remove option. In other words, it won't necessarily remove all traces of Norton Internet Security 2008 from your PC. To do so, says Symantec, you will need to use the Norton Removal Tool. According to Symantec, this Norton Removal Tool "uninstalls all Norton 2008/2007/2006/2005/2004/2003 products and Norton 360 from your computer." The difference, we were told, is that "the removal tool will remove shared components, like LiveUpdate, even if other Norton products that depend on the shared component are installed." Symantec does not recommend this removal tool if you have other Symantec products installed. In the end, however, ever after using both the uninstall application and the Norton Removal Tool, we still found registry keys and program file folders on our test machine. These we had to remove manually before installing our next text Internet Security package.