Norton Antivirus 2009 is a full-featured antivirus and antispyware product. It includes several options that are commonly passed over by other suites while still leaving many out that would be useful. The Norton scanning engine is one of the most complete on the market, but suffers from issues with system resource usage and overzealous integration with your computer that can cause freezing or simple hanging application.
Norton Antivirus 2009 is very easy to use. It comes with a default configuration that is sufficient to protect most home computer systems. It integrates with the start bar with an icon that is large and easy to spot. The icon also includes a way to tell if your system is protected or needs intervention from the user.
Being VB100%, W.C.L 1 and 2, as well as ICSA certified means that Norton Antivirus 2009 is equipped to handle all of your virus scanning needs. The scanner has proven to 3 independent labs that it has the ability to detect and remove viruses and variants of all viruses that the Norton virus engine was tested against.
The antispyware capabilities of Norton Antivirus 2009 were less effective than the virus scanner. It missed all of our tests while finding only a single tracking cookie on our whole test system.
We noticed that Norton Antivirus still suffers from some pretty significant issues with the program eating up resources and just slowing down our test machine overall. However, the latest version has made great strides in speeding up functions and is much better than previous versions. This is accomplished by only scanning files that are at risk.
Norton Antivirus 2009 is a good product for keeping your computer safe from viruses, but is not as effective as it should be against spyware. While it has a good track record of keeping viruses off of computers using it, it also has significant issues with slowing down computers that it is protecting. Symantec has done a lot to fix the slow down issues by reducing the amount of system resources used, but they still need to do more work to make the product a contender in the modern antivirus market.
Symantec pcAnywhere 12.0 is the worlds leading remote control solution. It lets you manage computers and resolve helpdesk issues quickly, and connect to remote devices simply and securely. Now pcAnywhere adds support for Mac OSX. And new gateway functionality enables remote users to quickly find the hosts they need through firewalls and routers with minimal setup.
New Features
Host Invitation feature allows end users to establish a reverse (outbound) connection to the helpdesk without knowing IP addresses
Mac OS X host support enables management of Mac OS X computers from any pcAnywhere remote system Gateway functionality makes it easier for remote users to access the pcAnywhere hosts they need Single Session Manager combines pcAnywhere Manager and all active sessions into one tabbed window view.
Key Features
Allows Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Pocket PC remote systems to connect to Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X hosts.
Connection wizard guides new users through their initial client-host connection powerful file transfer capabilities allow users to upload and download files across different platforms Mandatory password protection and login encryption help ensure that only authorized users can access a pcAnywhere host Uses FIPS 140-2 validated encryption up to AES 256-bit Bandwidth Auto-Detect automatically maximizes pcAnywhere performance for each type of connection Remote Management tools provide direct access to vital operating system utilities (such as Command Prompt, Task Manager, and Services) on the host system.
Backing up data – whether a selection of important files or an entire hard drive – remains an important chore in order to safeguard irreplaceable information.
With a well-designed utility the process should be less of a burden, for example by automatically backing up in the background with little drain on system resources. This is just one of the benefits of the latest version of Norton Ghost, a complete solution for the task of preserving your data against loss.
Norton Ghost 14.0’s core use is to make full system backups, for example to a disk image which can be used to restore an entire PC; or incremental backups, to update only those files that have changed.
New features added since the previous Ghost 12.0 (Norton is obviously not tempting fate by releasing Norton Ghost 13.0… ) include FTP backup, Google Desktop integration and Symantec ThreatCon integration, the latter designed to have additional automatic backups triggered by a cue from Symantec’s malware intelligence-gathering resource.
We used an external USB drive and Norton Ghost 14.0 to back up the contents of a Hi-Grade notebook running Windows Vista Ultimate, and found the software worked mostly as advertised.
Norton Ghost 14.0 could make a complete backup of the drive, as well as perform incremental backups either by schedule or on demand.
Using an external USB 2.0 drive did present a problem, as Norton Ghost 14.0 would not always allow the drive to be safely ejected, even when the program was closed.
Also, on occasion when the USB drive was connected with Norton Ghost 14.0 running, it would ask if it could be used as new backup destination, even though it was already configured as the primary backup drive.
Another Norton Ghost 14.0 feature we tested was LightsOut Restore, which creates an extra bootable system on the PC’s C drive.
After setting up, an option is added during booting and after the BIOS screen, to allow you to boot from the Symantec Disk Recovery (SDR) installation and thereafter restore the entire disk from a recent backup.
In our tests, Norton Ghost 14.0 did not show the connected USB drive containing the backups, which rather defeated the object of this feature……
