Norton Antivirus

One of the most reliable antivirus software programs

No doubt you've heard of Norton Antivirus program and you might be also one of many users worldwide. But if you're not, it might be helpful to read this brief description of the program, what it does, and how it can protect your computer from various viruses.

Norton Anti-virus Tools

Symantec's Norton AntiVirus software is perhaps the world's most trusted antivirus solution. It is available for both Windows PC's, and Apple Macintosh (Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh - S.A.M). Norton AntiVirus is a very reliable and easy-to-use anti-virus product. It's the best anti-virus product for catching viruses in downloaded files and E-mail. Norton AntiVirus is also more expensive than McAfee VirusScan although not by much. The added abilities of Norton can easily make up the price difference.

Norton AntiVirus comes with many tools that can be run in the background, including watching for suspicious PC activity and automatically checking downloaded files for viruses. Norton AntiVirus is also automatically configured to handle E-mail virus scanning for email messages coming into your computer, as well as those you send. This process automatically scans and cleans both incoming and outgoing email, stopping viruses from infecting your computer or spreading to others (if you happen to have a virus in your files).

It removes viruses automatically, without interrupting your work and prevents infections during real-time online chats. Norton also detects viruses in instant-message attachments. Because so many viruses and internet worms are now spread using email and Instant Message Systems, this is extremely valuable and necessary protection.

Norton Installation

Installation of Norton AntiVirus is simple. If you have purchased the program in store on CD, simply install the CD in your CD drive, and the installer will launch automatically. The installer should ask you if you want to do a pre-install scan of your system for viruses. This is a very good thing to do.

Once this is finished, the installation will proceed, and you can accept all the defaults without worry. Choosing default installation option is a simple and safe way to quickly install the program. Once the installation is complete, you'll be prompted to go online and get up-to-date virus definitions. DO NOT skip this step. Having up-to-date virus definitions is essential to the performance of any antivirus software.

Easy to Use

Norton is a very hands-off program. Pretty much it is an install and forget program that looks after itself. It will automatically notify you if there is anything that you need to do. If a virus is found, the software will try to automatically repair the file, if it can't, it will place the file in a safe 'quarantine' zone, and let you know. In addition to looking for known viruses, the Norton Antivirus Bloodhound feature tries to spot new viruses and worms by their behaviour that is common to such nasty programs.

Checking your system and downloading updates are two things you need to do regularly. Norton Antivirus makes them painless by setting up a full system scan once a week and checking for new updates (both to the software, and virus definitions) whenever you're online. These simple update scans hardly slow down your PC down at all.

Naturally, you can scan your computer for viruses whenever you want, by simply accessing Norton and choosing 'Scan now' option. Likewise, if you happen to be working on something that uses a lot of your resources, you can also stop a full system scan if it should start just at that moment. The system scan can also be paused.

Overall, Norton Antivirus is an excellent way to guard against viruses. It is the antivirus program that I recommend to my friends most often, and that I use personally.