About a week ago or so, I download Norton’s 2009 Beta software for a look see. The download file is about 48.9 MB in size. The process to install the beta requires a valid email address, since a product ID number is sent to activate the software. The installation of the software is very quick. I was up and running in less than 5 minutes including updates. The initial update was some 20MB in size, which I would venture a guess was to fine tune the software and correct known bugs that may have been reported during the beta testing.

Once I had the software installed, I did a quick scan to see if any critters were on my system, and it came back clean. The GUI look is clean and straight forward. Everything including all protections in place are easy to read and understand. It seems that Symantec has in fact cut out much of the junk that has cluttered previous versions. I found everything was working properly and jumped on the Internet. I noted no slow slow downs and readily accessed the Internet without incident.

So for the next few weeks I am going to put Norton through its paces and see what transpired. I want to see if the newest version of Norton is better at staying out of the way and not sucking down system resources. Thus far I have noticed a substantial increase in performance compared to previous versions that slow down a system and generated consumer complaints.

I’ll be reporting back with my findings in a few weeks.

Thus far the 2009 version looks promising.

Comments welcome.

PS The test system I loaded the beta on is using Windows XP with SP3.