Is Norton Internet Security 2009 just lipstick on a pig?

By Davey Winder
Tuesday, 16 September 2008 22:58

Home IT

Despite being pretty much the market leader in consumer IT security solutions, Symantec has spent years trying hard to shake off a well deserved reputation of hitting the unsuspecting public with resource hungry, slow products that are a bitch to uninstall. So, has it pulled it off with Norton 2009? We bring you the latest developments live from the European launch event in Madrid.

Barack Obama is still suffering from the political and media backlash having made remarks which, some would suggest, were aimed at Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

The expression that caused the outrage was 'lipstick on a pig' and I have to admit to wondering if that was how I would feel about the Norton 2009 product range after seeing them in action tonight.

Journalists from all over Europe have flown into Madrid, to the Puerto America hotel. Perhaps a poor choice of venue if you want to dispel lipstick on a pig talk.

Every floor of this fashionable place to stay has been designed by a different architect. My room is a strange combination of brown leather bed, curved shiny grey plastic walls and a bathroom which opens right up into the bedroom.

It looks great, if you like that kind of thing, but underneath it is still a hotel.

Things did not improve much when the launch, launched. To the roar of jet planes and space rocket engines, and a carefully choreographed light show, Norton 2009 was introduced.

We were meant to take away the notion that Norton Internet Security 2009 and Norton AntiVirus 2009 are fast, very fast indeed.

I just thought 'what a lot of hot air' and expected more would follow. And follow it did: from the announcement of the 500,000 man hours taken to build Norton 2009 to the 300 performance improvements made.

All meaningless marketing drivel, and nobody really cares at the end of the day. However, as Symantec Vice President of Consumer Business, Rowan Trollope got into his stride he revealed that "security products are too slow" and vowed that Symantec had decided to resolve the problem this year.

Funnily enough, three or four years ago I was listening to exactly the same speech from Symantec, although this time it was at the Santa Monica labs in Los Angeles.

Perhaps the quote of the evening, also from Rowan Trollope, was that "people shouldn't tolerate a security product with poor performance." Good job he didn't say that three or four years ago or Symantec would have been out of business by now.

Luckily for him, luckily for Symantec, and just maybe luckily for us things have changed.

What has Symantec done to improve Norton 2009 performance, and does the reality actually stand up to the hype? Get the latest hot off the press test results on page 2...

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