Symantec Launches (Debloated?) 2009 Products

In July, Symantec opened its 2009 security products to public beta, promising that they would no longer be the performance hogs they have been in the past. You may know that Symantec's latest versions of their security products have been criticized over their memory footprint and CPU usage.

Of course, there's also the activation issue (the software must be activated), but that's another point of contention.

So this year Symantec focused on speed and resources, calling it a "zero-impact" performance goal. And on Tuesday Symantec announced the launch of its 2009 line, highlighting the following bullet points in a press release:
  • Light on Resources: As we said this is one of the biggest complaints about Symantec's latest versions of its security products. Symantec says the new version "includes hundreds of performance enhancements." According to Symantec's own tests, NIS 2009 installs in just 52 seconds and requires just 7 Mbytes of host memory.
  • Comprehensive Protection: There's never been much argument here. Norton security products have traditionally scored high, though not always highest, in anti-malware tests.
  • New Usability Enhancements
  • Free Technical Support: Now, free technical support, that we can get behind --- phone, email, or online, it's now free for a year.
Pricing? For Norton 360 it's $79.99 (up to 3 PCs), Norton Internet Security 2009 is $69.99 (up to 3 PCs) and Norton AntiVirus 2009 is $39.99. All those include the typical one-year service subscription for updates and product usage.

Currently the release only covers U.S. customers; Local-language versions for European countries should be on shelves by the end of this month.