Norman Antivirus Review

This program is available directly from the vendor.

Vendor's antivirus software homepage:
http://www.norman.com

Pros - Norman Antivirus:

• Network management support included
• Multiple on demand scanning tasks can be scheduled
• Can be set to run a slower scan which uses less CPU resources, preserving overall system performance

• Interface a bit confusing. Many small programs, some with overlapping features
• Few options to optimize a scan
• Some viruses detected by on-access scan can only be removed by running a subsequent on-demand scan
• Low on polymorphic viruses and backdoors/trojans
• Doesn't completely uninstall
• More expensive than other programs with same features

• Some viruses are falsely reported as cleaned when in fact disinfection failed
• Terrible support for archive file formats
• Doesn't scan email streams (POP3, SMTP)
• Major stability issues, fixes issued regularly

• None specified

As an antivirus solution Norman isn't the best choice. It has a good virus detection record in several virus categories, but offers no support for archive formats other than ARJ and ZIP-files. Norman Antivirus doesn't support any self-extracting archives.

Worse is the lack of email support. Norman Antivirus scans inbound email only, but not before you try to open messages or save them to disk. This means you may have a virus on your computer that's not being detected. You're also in jeopardy of forwarding infected messages to others.

You can configure virus definition updates as on-demand, whenever you connect to the Internet, or from a server in a network. This is good, but you might have to reboot after an update has taken place.

Norman Antivirus once was one of the best antivirus solutions, but those days are gone. Both the program itself, as well as the information offered at the website, looks old-fashion, signaling lack of any significant development for this product previously.

Norman fails to mention how you can extend your subscription period to virus definition files. You cannot buy a subscription at their webshop. This leads us to suspect that you must buy the program again when your initial subscription period expires.

Norman Antivirus is one of the most expensive antivirus programs. It's not recommended by us.

Norman Virus Control 5.0 installs easily, using a standard Windows setup program. Once installed, a system tray icon offers access to the program's functions. Right-click to view a pop-up menu of functions: scan hard disks, initiate a virus scan, or use Internet Update to schedule automatic virus definition downloads. Though Norman's controls are mostly straightforward, we found the many sections and subsections of the Configuration Settings menu a bit confusing. Fortunately, the default configuration will suffice for most users