Norton AntiVirus 2003 By Greg Alwang April 22, 2003

• Product: Norton AntiVirus 2003
• Direct Price: $49.95 direct; yearly subscription renewal, $14.95
• Company Info: Symantec Corp., 408-253-9600, www.symantec.com

Editor Rating:

With Norton AntiVirus 2003, Symantec has taken a great product and made it even better. At $49.95 direct, NAV isn't the least expensive tool, but with improved detection and removal of worms and Trojan horses, direct scanning of instant-messaging attachments, quicker definition updates, and its unique outgoing e-mail scanning, it's well worth the price. NAV offers home and small-business users stellar AV protection that does its job fast.

With its multilayered protection, if you disable the real-time scanner, NAV still protects e-mail and instant-messaging attachments and looks for suspicious behavior via its Worm Blocking technology. This makes it almost impossible to forward infected files inadvertently—even masked files or those within ZIP files. A configurable tray icon shows when mail is being scanned.

After installation, the first LiveUpdate requires your attention, unlike those in Panda Antivirus and PC-cillin, and the 2.6MB download takes a long time over a dial-up connection. Subsequent definition updates are much quicker and automated. Registration is optional (unlike with some other products we reviewed).

Beginners can easily run manual scans or updates, and the main screen always shows the last full scan, update, and subscription dates. You're unlikely to need to consult the manual: Context-sensitive help explains advanced items, such as Bloodhound heuristics, and recommends settings for the best protection. As with McAfee VirusScan and NOD32, settings can be password-protected.

By default, NAV's AutoProtect scans all files on access. For better performance, an optional SmartScan setting scans only recommended file types, as NOD32 and PC-cillin do. You can schedule scans to run at multiple times; by default NAV scans your entire system every Friday night.

On detecting a virus, NAV tries to clean it and then quarantines the file if cleaning fails. As with PC-cillin, a comprehensive virus alert tells you what action was taken, but you can easily change settings to specify what action should be taken when a virus is detected.

Symantec has perhaps one of the best online support sites we've seen. You can send a support question via e-mail, but chances are you'll find an answer on the site. A new Automated Support Assistant both determines which Symantec products and versions you have and checks to see whether you need updates. Like McAfee, Symantec charges for phone support—even for installation issues. The cost being $29.95 per incident, your best bet is to give the Web help a shot first.

For a firewall or URL blocker, you'll need to buy Symantec's Norton Internet Security suite separately. But if an antivirus program is all you need, you can't go wrong with NAV 2003 for powerful scanning features geared to both novices and advanced users.