Surprised how snappy Norton Antivirus is!

I have been an old user of Eset NOD32 as it was the lightest when it comes to system resources and the system feels snappy as if there was no AV installed on it.

Recently, after version 4, things started changing, with each version being heavier than the other.

I recently saw this performance test where Norton performs very good

So I bought a cheap 1 year license for $15 USD at a retail store and boy was I amazed. My system feels much snappier now even though it was already fast but NOD32 seems to slow down the reboot process.

a Proof of this I experienced personally is previously, my reboot time (not boot, but a full reboot) was 26 to 2 seconds.

After restoring my system to a clean state before installing any AV on it I now get a 20 second reboot time!

I am really impressed by how Norton AV have become it was a big resource hog in the past just like McAfee

I read on many others forums that users say its HIPS is much better than NOD32's HIPS (they call it SONAR for Norton)

 

It still is a big resource hitter. Hardware has overcome a lot of the effect you feel from it though. I mean, look at your hardware specs. Thats why it feels snappy.

I worked on a C2D laptop recently with Norton installed, and let me tell you...it was not snappy.

 

I also was very surprised with the speed of Norton when I used it during a 60-day trial period with the new laptop I bought about 2 1/2 months ago. This was the Norton Internet Security (NIS) package, a more comprehensive package than Norton AntiVirus. NIS even has a small pane within it's main panel which shows CPU resource usage; it's a reflection of Windows Task Manager. And, I could tell just by opening NIS and seeing that resource usage pane that NIS was, indeed, not being a resource pig.

At certain times, NIS displayed a small popup message panel in the Notification Area and it said that NIS would do certain tasks during times of idle computer use. A nice feature.

When the trial period expired, I decided to use avast! Free Antivirus since I've been using it for quite some time on a desktop system. And by the way, I've noticed no sign of any performance gain by switching from NIS to avast! If I had decided to go with a paid version of antivirus software, I'm sure I would have continued with NIS.

 

USAFVETERAN
I have been following you for years and I know you are a skilled pc user.
I had Norton before and agree that its new suites are not resource hogs. It is a speedy light program with a bad reputation from the old days.

I now use Defender and the Win 8 native firewall but for better security reasons was thinking about going back to Norton's Security Suite especially because I get it for free from Comcast.
Norton has a couple of things to be careful about, i.e., disable tamper protection before trying a system restore. It is doing its job telling you someone is tinkering with your system.
Otherwise, it had a lot of tools and great protection while running on a small amount of resource.

Would you advise Norton or MS for security?