Norton Internet Security 2014 review: Polished security suite with excellent protection

Norton Internet Security 2014 ($80 for one year of protection on up to three PCs) looks great—and it offers excellent protection against all threats. Internet Security 2014 also provides mobile security, comprehensive parental controls, and system insights, so advanced users can track their PCs’ performance. But Symantec’s suite isn’t perfect: Its menus, settings, and features are geared a little more toward advanced users than toward security newbies.

In our protection tests, Norton Internet Security 2014 was excellent, on a par with Eset Smart Security 7, F-Secure Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014. Norton successfully defended our test systems against all zero-day malware attacks and all zoo malware assaults. Norton’s algorithms didn’t block or erroneously warn against any safe websites, nor did it flag any legitimate software as dangerous.

In AV-Test’s performance test, Norton received a mark of 8, tied with Eset Smart Security 7 for the highest mark among the ten suites in in our roundup, and an indication that you can expect to see a significant performance hit—slower startup and shutdown times and lag when opening and installing programs—when the software is running.

Norton Internet Security 2014's interface is easy to navigate.

Installing Norton is a breeze, unless you have other security suites on your system (including trial versions). You must uninstall other antivirus programs before you can proceed with your Norton installation. Fortunately, Norton lets you uninstall incompatible programs from within its installer. The uninstalling process may require a restart, but a straight Norton installation does not.

Norton’s interface blends perfectly with Windows 8, with large buttons and toggles instead of tiny checkboxes. The main screen presents you with four large squares, for status (colored bright green if you’re protected, and red if you’re not), scanning, updating the malware library, and access to advanced settings such as network protection and parental controls. Along the top of the window are text links to other settings and services.

The settings menu is clearly designed for relatively advanced users. When you click the little question-mark boxes next to certain items, you jump to explanations on Symantec’s main support site, but Inline explanations—like those used in Kaspersky’s security suite—would have provided a more seamless experience.

Norton Internet Security offers excellent protection, albeit at some cost to PC performance. Its polished, touchscreen-friendly interface is a plus, but it isn’t especially accessible to novices.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Review: Norton Internet Security 2013: Solid performer with a polished interface

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

Symantec’s 2013 edition of Norton Internet Security ($50 for one year and three PCs, as of 12/19/12) is a solid performer with a polished, touch-optimized user interface. This security suite didn’t totally dominate its competitors, but it did completely block, detect, and disable all malware in our real-world tests, and it performed well enough overall to snag second place in our roundup.

Norton’s excellent showing in our real-world attack test indicates that it should be effective at blocking brand-new malware attacks as it encounters them in the wild. As noted in the F-Secure review, of the security suites we tested, four others were also successful at completely blocking 100 percent of attacks: Bitdefender, F-Secure, G Data, and Trend Micro.

Norton produced stellar—though not absolutely perfect—results in detecting known malware. In our malware-zoo detection test, the program successfully detected 99.8 percent of known malware samples. Norton Internet Security also put up a perfect score in our false-positive test: It didn’t mistakenly identify any safe files, out of more than 250,000, as being malicious.

Norton does an acceptable job of cleaning up a system that has already been infected, but it missed some infections completely in our evaluation. In our system cleanup test, the program detected and disabled 90 percent of infections, and completely cleaned up 60 percent of infections. This is a decent but not fantastic showing—seven of our tested suites detected and disabled 100 percent of infections, and six cleaned up all traces of infection at least 70 percent of the time.

On the other hand, Norton Internet Security is a relatively lightweight program that won’t bog down your system. It added about half a second to startup time (compared to a PC that had no antivirus program installed), and also added 3 seconds to shutdown time; in all of our other speed tests, it was faster than average. Norton is faster than average when it comes to scanning speeds, as well. The package required just 1 minute, 19 seconds to complete an on-demand (manual) scan, and 2 minutes, 55 seconds to complete an on-access scan—both are times that represent better-than-average results.

Norton’s interface is very polished and simple, and the program installs with just one click. The main window has tilelike buttons, which look designed to work well with Windows 8 touch systems. You’ll find four tiles on the main screen: a tile that shows your protection status, along with information about your CPU usage; a ‘Scan Now’ tile; a LiveUpdate tile (which you’d use to install any updates to the suite); and a tile for advanced settings. You can also access the settings via the Settings tab, which is located at the top of the screen.

The settings menu is relatively easy to navigate, though it has more options than a beginning user really needs. Still, Norton does a good job of explaining different features and toggles, and a little help button (which takes you to Norton’s online support site) is always located next to confusing terms.

The 2013 version of Norton Internet Security is definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a Windows 8 user.

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DriveImage XML An Effective, If Not Polished, Imaging Program

DriveImage XML isn't the only free drive imaging software on the market anymore and there are slicker solutions now available from Easeus and others, but for quick and simple imaging it fits the bill perfectly. It also has a much lighter footprint on your system than the competition.

Though not particularly handsome, the DriveImage XML interface is logical and relatively easy to use.The DriveImage XML interface isn't particularly pretty, but it's logical and easy to use. Where the program stumbles is in the operational error-checking.

Most programs will suggest removable media for the image destination, but DriveImage XML defaults to the Windows documents folder. Also, the program doesn't check to see if there's enough space on the destination drive for the image before embarking on the operation. I had the process fail once due to a lack of room on the destination drive.

DriveImage XML also copies one drive to another and features both volume locking and volume shadow copy imaging. It will also run from Runtime's own free recovery CD or the BartPE CD for disaster recovery. Images can be split for easy storage on CDs, or one large file.

Once you're used to its minor drawbacks, DriveImage XML works well and is reliable. Few users will need anything more.

—Jon L. Jacobi

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

DriveImage XML An Effective, If Not Polished, Imaging Program

DriveImage XML isn't the only free drive imaging software on the market anymore and there are slicker solutions now available from Easeus and others, but for quick and simple imaging it fits the bill perfectly. It also has a much lighter footprint on your system than the competition.

Though not particularly handsome, the DriveImage XML interface is logical and relatively easy to use.The DriveImage XML interface isn't particularly pretty, but it's logical and easy to use. Where the program stumbles is in the operational error-checking.

Most programs will suggest removable media for the image destination, but DriveImage XML defaults to the Windows documents folder. Also, the program doesn't check to see if there's enough space on the destination drive for the image before embarking on the operation. I had the process fail once due to a lack of room on the destination drive.

DriveImage XML also copies one drive to another and features both volume locking and volume shadow copy imaging. It will also run from Runtime's own free recovery CD or the BartPE CD for disaster recovery. Images can be split for easy storage on CDs, or one large file.

Once you're used to its minor drawbacks, DriveImage XML works well and is reliable. Few users will need anything more.

—Jon L. Jacobi

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here