Feature

Command Performance II: The Need For Speed

All you want to do is take a two-minute work break to watch the latest YouTube™ video of cats doing crazy things before you get back to condensing mind-numbing spreadsheets and PDF reports into concise (yet still mind-numbing) Powerpoint™ slides.

But your computer is running like it’s underwater. The cat movie keeps stopping and starting before it finally freezes. You invoke the fateful CTRL/ALT/DEL and restart. As the computer boots lackadaisically, you wistfully remember how it used to run like greased lightning when it was considered a state-of-the-art machine two years ago. So why is it so slow now?

You look down at your taskbar and see your security software icon. You used to feel comforted that it was always there, standing between you and the cybercriminals. But what, you think, has it done for you lately? You don’t click on unknown attachments or download free games from strange sites with bad grammar. Maybe, you think, your security software has gone soft — fat and happy, it just sits around taking up memory and processing power, making it impossible for you to take a five minute break to watch cats do yoga.

You think maybe its time to uninstall and take your chances. Perhaps the anxiety of wasting precious time has outpaced your fear of malware, bots, and phishing.

A Kinder, Faster Norton

The challenge to make security software faster and lighter is part and parcel of making it effective. After all, this software is dedicated to shielding you from any obtrusive and problematic effects, not contributing to them. So before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, let us assure you that Symantec feels your need for speed.

In 2006, Symantec formed a Performance Team — a group of engineers whose sole job is to measure performance and make Norton products run faster and lighter on your precious system resources. They’re dedicated to tracking Norton product performance against competing security products, troubleshooting performance issues with customers in real-time, and continuously monitoring metrics such as memory usage, boot time impact, scan times, install time, impact on Internet download speed and UI response speed. Motivated by very vocal consumer concern (and their own best interests as avid computer users like you), they went after it like speed demons, rewriting 80 percent of the code from the ground up. This overhaul netted significant product performance gains from 2006 to 2008 in key benchmarks like system scan times (now 34 percent faster than 2006), File downloads (the 2008 product scans and downloads files 47 percent faster than 2006), and working memory space (now needs 76 percent less working memory than 2006).

Keeping Up With (And Passing) The Joneses

According to the latest studies of leading security software, Norton’s performance clearly sets the pace in the security software world.

In recent third-party testing conducted by PassMark—a world-renowned product testing laboratory focused entirely on the system impact performance of 24 antivirus and Internet security products from leading vendors—both Norton Norton Internet Security 2008 and Norton AntiVirus 2008 were given the highest-possible overall ranking. PassMark conducted this test to quantitatively compare seven different performance categories, which included boot time, memory utilization, and the effect the products had on Internet browsing.

Put simply, the study shows Norton runs faster and takes up less space than its competitors. How much faster? How much lighter? Here’s a look at how Norton Internet Security stacks up against competitors, and a little perspective of what that could mean to your stress level:

• 15% faster boot time, or more than 21 seconds faster than average. Twenty-one seconds is a long time when you’re watching an hourglass. Save that much time every day and in a year, you’ll have earned yourself more than two hours of quality IM-ing with friends.
• 43% faster scan time. Ever huffed and puffed on the gym treadmill to run a six-minute mile? Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco holds the world record for a one-mile run at 3:43—about 43% faster than your six-minute mile. Think about it: if the average security software suite equates to your six-minute mile, Norton is speedy Hicham El Guerrouj. So who would you rather have running for you?
• 82% less memory. Norton Internet Security used a modest 11 megabytes of memory on average during the tests, 82% less than competitors. Memory is a place where you can clearly see the Performance Team’s obsessions paying off—between the 2006 and 2007 releases, they cut memory usage by 75%. If you could improve your efficiency at your job at this rate, you’d only have to work on Tuesdays and for two hours on Thursday mornings. Alternatively, if they could get the average sedan to run on 82% less gas, it’d be like the glory days of $12 fill-ups.
• 57% faster downloads. This is where it counts—with Norton Internet Security 2008 monitoring your Web traffic, pages load twice as fast as the competition. That’s twice as fast to get to your favorite political blog, sports news site, or cat falling into the toilet video.

In particular, the rate of performance improvement over the past two years is impressive, and hints at things to come on the performance front. Innovations like the Smart Task Scheduler in Norton 360, which automatically checks for updates and scans for threats while your system is idle and stays on hold when you start to work again, are the types of advances that will propel your computer even faster as they are added in near future updates.

Form Your Own Performance Team

So if the new Norton is so fast and light, why is your computer so slow? The answer to that can be a little tricky. It depends mainly on two things: (1) your hardware—how much memory and processing power your system has—and (2) your software—what applications you’re running and how those applications use available system resources.

We hate to be the ones to tell you, but even if you’re running a recent system with a decent amount of memory and processing power, memory-sucking applications can stow away on your machine more easily than you might think. Think of the last time you moved house. Chances are you found boxes with old movie ticket stubs, photographs of someone else’s dog, the tapestry you hung on your wall in college... All of that junk is technically yours. Computers collect junk, too. Perfectly above-board applications that you chose to install may have asked you if you wanted a browser add-on, or an automatic check for updates, or some other additional service or functionality that now puts a drag your system resources.

A good utility suite can help you deal with some of these unnecessary applications by making sure they don’t run all the time, or uninstalling them altogether. A utility suite can also perform other routine maintenance, like de-fragmenting your hard drive, which is necessary from time to time to keep your computer in top shape.

You can also check the Symantec KnowledgeBase for more tips on streamlining performance. Or, learn more about how Norton Premium Services can help you tune up your PC.

So before you decide to strip yourself of security software altogether and go freewheeling naked through cyberspace, take a couple of deep breaths and remember: A few seconds of boot time is one thing, a constant stream of pop-up ads for online casinos is another. Think of the time it would take to explain to your spouse how a virus wiped your system and erased all your wedding photos. Or for that matter, think about the time and anxiety it would take to deal with your banks and the FBI if your identity got stolen.