Everything is heading towards 2010 and, as usual, the security product developers make haste to issue their latest work before the end of 2009 (generally it all becomes clear once fall comes). With BitDefender an inch away from closing the beta for its Total Security and releasing the final development and Panda going the same way, Symantec follows the trend with the issue of the Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus 2010 betas.

Both products boast new looks and claim to be the “fastest and lightest antivirus solution Symantec has ever delivered.” And given the latest drift in Norton family products, there is no reason to doubt this statement. NIS has been built with the broader aim to guard your PC, network, online activities and your identity. Safe Web technology works to block Internet threats before infecting your machine.

The interface of NIS 2010 may not be to the taste of its fans, but it sure makes finding options and customizing the way it works easier than ever. A surprise is the Flip Screen, which lets you leaf the main view to a performance screen that provides details on CPU and RAM usage. In order to stress the low resource usage even more, Symantect implemented a “Norton vs the rest of the processes” view in NIS, showing the total usage of system resources by Norton components and what the rest of the processes gobble up.


Norton Antivirus 2010 is shaped up with similar features and interface alike. Norton AntiVirus’ Pulse Updates is present, just like in the 2009 edition, and it is here to “ensure that you are always plugged into Symantec’s global security grid and you are never more than a few minutes away from the latest update.” NAV follows the same pattern as NIS, but it provides less protection modules as it runs short of the Smart Firewall and the Identity Safe components.


Unlike other security suites on the market, none of the two betas from Symantec require restarting your system in order to complete installation. This new level of comfort, however, is eliminated upon uninstall.

Both apps have modest system requirements asking for at least a 300 MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM and about 300MB of free space for running on Windows XP. As for Vista and Windows 7, if the system supports the OS there will be no problem with running NIS or NAV 2010. The final releases of the two pieces of protection software are expected to be launched come fall.