Features

Norton Internet Security is a well featured package. It contains a firewall, an anti-virus, “Norton Systemworks”, and anti-spyware. All of these applications, even on their own, are excellent in their own right. Combined together, we should see an excellent example of compatibility and performance.

The firewall is relatively standard, giving you control over nearly every aspect of your internet connection. We're sure that the default settings are just fine, though you can get in there and fine tune certain things (such as port forwarding or application control).

The anti-virus is probably world famous. This is the application which made the name “Norton” famous. As always, it runs in the background, and has the options of various different types of scans and cleaning sweeps.

The anti-spyware application is also quite standard. From our experience, it is no better or no worse than competing products.

Norton Systemworks is a great program that will go through your computer and find out where it can streamline things, making your computer perform better and operate more efficiently.

Using Norton Internet Security

Once we had installed Norton it went right to work, requiring almost no configuration from us. Since this product is marketed at an audience that probably doesn't know, or want to know, how to configure various applications, we're going to call this a good thing.

The antivirus and firewall require no interaction at all when they are running. They just sit in the background, and an occasional popup or two will blink on screen, asking us for guidance. It's usually wondering if it can unblock a specific programs internet access. The other two applications, Norton Systemworks and the anti-spyware, require you to get involved, but neither one of them are mind boggling. In fact, they're both deceptively simple to use. After you've done it once you'll know what we mean.

Conclusion

This program lives up to its reputation. Once again, we are given a new and updated version of an old favorite.