Let’s begin the Review with the beginning from the installation:

Installation

When you first run the disk to install it then you would be given the options to install it, see the documentation and also interestingly option to run Norton Bootable Recovery tool which can help you to remove any existing infection while booting from it. This is particularly useful in case you cannot boot or have been infected severely by a malware.

After that, procedure is quite straight as you would be required to enter your product key or you could install a 30 day trial to see if it works for you.

The best part of it is the speed of installation. It installs in a jiffy and takes around 1 minute only to install. It uses its own installer and even does not require any reboot after installation.

You would also be prompted to create your Norton Account. This would contain your subscription, license details and yu could get regular updates, discounts or other info if you desire.

Interface

Norton interface is very clean and simple. The first tab tells you about computer protection status where you have option to scan your PC check history and see the quarantine items.

Next tab includes “Network Protection “includes vulnerability protection and network security map showing your current network, no. of PC connected and their status and details.

Last is the “Web protection” which can be used to see, modify your login details for your site and also your credit card details.

Parental control is optional in not installed by default.

A new thing in 2011 version is that you have an Activity Map which displays no. of prevalent threats in major cities of the world in last 24 hours. Next to that is online family button where you can see the statistics of sites visited, alerts displayed etc. you would have to use the Norton account details which you had created before. You can use online backup for storing your data online. Also a safe web button can be used to check whether a website is secured or not.

You would not see the CPU and Norton usage meter which was there in previous versions.

Norton introduced concept of pulse update which could also be seen in this release. So your signatures are updated after every few seconds or minutes.

Now clicking on “Scan now opens a new window where you have option to perform a ‘Quick scan’, ‘Full System scan’ or ‘Custom Scan’.  You also get a chance to perform “Reputation Scan “where your running processes would be checked for their prevalence and age to check their status.

A new addition is “Scan Facebook Wall “which checks that all links in your FB wall are secure and safe.

SONAR 3 is there in the version upgrading the SONAR 2 to which looks for the “zero day” threats and provides protection against then even before their signature has been downloaded from the net.

Clicking on ‘Performance’ would flip the window 180 degrees and would give you a system insight and display the installed programs, any identified threat, downloads, alerts etc. Also below that you would be able to see CPU and memory resources used by system and Norton.

Norton Insight helps you to see what programs are running and  rating of each of these programs along with the trust levels, resource usage etc.

Norton Identity Safe keeps your passwords, login info , credit cards details secure by creating profiles and make sure that these sensitive information are not stolen and given away to fake websites.

So summarising the features:

• Insight Protection
• Antivirus
• AntiSpyWare
• Sonar 3
• Anti-Rootkit
• Bot Protection
• Trojan Protection
• Worm Protection
• Identity Safe

Firewall

Firewall settings can be found in Network Settings category of the main application settings. It offers several ways to customize the rules according to your needs. Smart Firewall is used to create, edit or delete the network rules.

Most of the time you might not even need to access it as Norton would automatically allow an application to access net and create a rule for it. In case it doesn’t it would inform you about the reason and of course you would have the right to change it as per your wish.

The ‘Trust Control’ gives to right to choose which devices in your network to be trusted. The firewall has been well customized by default and you would not require very much changes in general.

Performance:

Norton has a very fast scanner and it took around 40-45 minutes in scanning my 320 GB hard drive. Its scanning speed is very good and definitely better than previous 2010 version.

Norton uses around 7-11 MB when idle.

Its Application Launch time is around 0.07 seconds.

It added around 10 sec to my system reboot time though I don’t give much importance to reboot time as it cannot be very accurately measured and defined.

It has acquired a score of 179 in performance test by av-compartives and awarded with Advance+ award.

Malware Detection

For this section I would be using data of most well trusted sites of virus, malware capability testing for antivirus by various vendors.

It has scored one of the best ratings in recent av-test.org test:

Protection: 5.0

Repair: 5.5

Usability: 5.5

You can download and check details at: http://www.av-test.org/certifications

In AV Comparatives: On Demand Detection Test, Norton scored  3 out of 3 Stars. In the 2nd test, the Proactive Test, Norton didn’t perform as well – receiving a 2-Star rating.

Norton is ICSA lab certified.

Norton passed the most recent VB100 test also and has been clearing it since many years though the current graph given at the site a few days ago showed around 70-80% detection overall which was bit disappointing.

West Coast Labs has also certified Norton products.

Customer Support

Norton offers excellent after sales service. I was very disappointed to see support of Norton few years back where there was only paid support but things have changed drastically over the time.

Now you get:

• Free Customer support
• Email Support
• Live chat to assist you
• Free Phone support in selected countries as well

I enquired few technical and sales issue and all of them were very well death, with proper attention and documentation provided and were solved within 24 hours which was very appealing. A few times my PC was taken over virtually by support person to solve certain issues.

You still have paid support option too.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that Norton Internet Security 2011 is one of the best security suite present in the market today.

It offers best detections along with very simple GUI which can be used by anyone with not so good technical knowledge. It comes under category of “Install and Forget “applications, so you don’t have to worry.

It’s one of the fastest too with very less overhead to computer resources so that you can use them where it’s more important.  It has great features which also impresses the ‘nerds’ and quick updates keeps you on power every time.

I would like to see a feature called as “Sandboxie “which could be seen in Avast and Kaspersky. It allows users to run any application in isolation.

Anyhow, it’s overall an Excellent Product and Recommended for everyone from novice to professionals.

How to Win a license of Norton Internet Security 2011!!

Good news to the readers of my site is that I would be giving away THREE licenses of Norton Internet Security 2011 to my readers . You are required to fulfill two simple conditions as described below :

1. Follow @Ankurandu on twitter and Share this article on Twitter, Facebook , Digg or any other Social Site and post the link of that in the comment.

2. Tell us ” Why would you like to win Norton Internet Security 2011 ? ” in your comment along with above mentioned link.

(You can write  about its strength, weaknesses, what it does well or what can be improved in the next version and where you find it to be better than other products in the market )

3. How did you like the Review. Any suggestions, feedback, or you would like to add something. (optional)

Thats it , after doing this you get to enter into the contest and Three lucky winners would be announced soon.

Contest closes on  4th January 2011.

Most importantly I would like to thank Symantec Corporation  for Sponsoring this giveaway and Special Thanks to Sushil for helping me organise this Giveaway.

UPDATE: Winners would be announced by 9th January 2011.

• Optimize system
• Fix problems
• Overview of all functions
• Customize Windows
• Gain disk space

Interface

What a personally like about Tune-Up Utilities is its Clean , Simple yet informative Interface . You would see tabs pertaining to each problem and features as i have mentioned above. Its look is similar to 2010 version , so those using previous version would be comfortable to work with similar interface .

Though this interface has advantage of laying out properly exactly what you need in a better way. i liked the cool blue background.

The Status and Recommendations is a kind of Synopsis for you telling about ” What exactly is the Problem with your System and how to Optimize things “.

TuneUp 2011 has new Tuning Status indicator which would  quick you an  overview of the optimisations that have been performed, and the amount of optimisation that is still possible.

Turbo Mode

Well , from the point you install tune up utilities, you would surely notice the Turbo Mode. This has the function of making your system perform to the fullest with possibly maximum optimization, of course you have the power to still control where you don’t need optimization. It might disable you Aero experience in windows and shut-up the other not very much essential features to boost your performance.

If you just love the fast experience inside the turbo Mode then you can even permanently have the Turbo mode to be On .

Optimize System

Under this tab , you would have the option to disable the programs which may be dragging your system.  So here you could uninstall the softwares as well as control which programs should start on boot and you can disable the other which seems unnecessary.  So when you disable the program it wont run in the background and of course you can re-enable anything whenever you want .

Increase Performance

This section would show you with various recommendations to increase your System performance . These are properly sub-divided into Hardware & software , Visual and Internet .

You can accept the recommendation or hide it if you don’t need it .  Each recommendation would be briefly provided about what will it do so that you can judge what actions to take. I personally refused all recommendations in visual section since i use a very good graphics card and would like to use  it to the fullest whereas i accepted most of the recommendations in the Internet and Hardware sections.

Clean Registry and De fragment Disk

This is pretty clear , so i wont explain in detail . these are pretty essential features which are bound to be in such similar software .  It would help you to clean unnecessary and old registries and de-fragment your disk for better performance .

Gain Disk Space

This is very useful feature to recover back your hard drive space .  It would help you to clean the unnecessary files , shortcuts etc . some of the non- essential functions could also be removed.

i personally like the removing old backups which saved a lot of my space removing old restore points.

Customize Windows

well, after all optimization , tune up would also help to solve the various problems some users face very frequently.  This would help you to personalize your graphices experience . You could change the logon screen , visual styles as well modify setting of taskbar, start menu and control animation and effects ( i suggest you better not ).

CONCLUSION

Well , thats not it , Tune up has a load of other function and features and it would be difficult to list them all. Nevertheless on basis of my experience wit h it a few days, I am impressed with the software and there is no doubt that it has to be one your must keep software in your PC . It would help you to maintain the same speed which was there on newly System . It solves your problems with ease.

So its a thumbs up from me  for tune up utilities.

Free Giveaway !!

Good news to the readers of my site is that I would be giving away TWO licenses worth $49.95 each of TUNE Up UTILITIES 2011 to my readers . you are required to fulfill two simple conditions as described below :

1. Share this article on Twitter, Facebook , Digg or any other Social Site and post the link of that in the comment.

2. Tell us ” Why would you like to win Tune Up Utilities ? ” in your comment along with above mentioned link.

Thats it , after doing this you get to enter into the contest and two lucky winners would be announced. Contest closes on  30th November.

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a new site ipuzone.com have been launched for all students of IP university which mainly focuses on B.Tech course.

you can find al question paper, fest info, placement guide and other useful information there.

it is still new and under development stage and looking for active members, contributors and moderators.

so do check out www.ipuzone.com

will .. after upgradation from Electronics … now i am back to computer science wih CSE branch … 1 new subject to study on my own … getting results of minor exams.. not good as i expected … though it was not easy this time .. so comparatively less marks …

in a new class with new people… actually now i know almost everyone in college .. ive been to ICE then -> IT,, then -> ECE and finally ==> CSE

lets hope the decision turns correct