Symantec Rewrites Security Suite to Curb Nuisances

It can be awful to have your Windows computer infected with malicious software, but it is almost as bad suffering the daily burdens imposed by the security software designed to protect you.

Too often, security programs significantly slow down the computer, causing lags in booting up the machine, launching programs and receiving e-mail. Not only that, they can be incredibly annoying, popping up frequent messages or asking questions in techie lingo.

Now, Symantec has decided to radically rewrite its main security suite for Windows to directly address these problems. And in my tests, this new product, Norton Internet Security 2009, largely succeeded. It isn't perfect, but it is the fastest, simplest and least obtrusive security suite I have ever used.

Being quick and quiet is great, but, of course, a security product also has to be effective against the vast number of viruses, spyware programs and other malicious attacks aimed at Windows. I don't have a security lab in which to test such effectiveness. But PC Magazine does, and the magazine called the new Norton suite's spyware and virus protection "extremely effective." The magazine's tests are described at http://tinyurl.com/4hc9hm.

However, I wasn't impressed with Norton's optional antispam feature, which caused the only significant problem I ran into in my testing.

The new suite costs $70, and can be purchased at www.symantec.com and elsewhere. For that price, you get to install it on three PCs and you get a one-year subscription to its updates, which cost $60 thereafter.

Symantec is including free support, even over the phone, though in my tests this support proved lousy. Norton Internet Security 2009 works only on Windows XP and Windows Vista.