Norton Summit 2009

What is Norton Summit 2009?

The Norton Summit 2009 is an exclusive, all encompassing event covering anything and everything related to Norton. There will be separate breakout sessions covering various topical conversations which you could choose to attend. From the sessions, you will gain insights to the increasingly sophisticated threat landscape, a snapshot of the latest findings from Symantec’s latest Online living Report (NOLR) and get access to the new developments you can expect from Symantec in 2009.

The Event

I made my way through the crazy after-work rush-hour KL traffic, I was lucky that all the routes I had chosen were pretty alright and the only jam that I had to face was along Jalan Ampang, the final and only road to reach the venue, which was at Renaissance Hotel.

I was introduced to Effendy Ibrahim (Norton Business Lead, Asia South Region) upon collecting my goodie bag and name tag, and shortly after that I was introduced to the food that was to accompany throughout the evening. 😀

I also met a lot of Norton Inner Circle (NIC), here’s the area where we get to know one another a bit while chowing down on the goodies.

NIC is basically Norton’s exclusive community. 🙂 NIC members will be invited to exclusive Norton events and be exposed to the latest Norton products before they even hit the stores as Symantec values your thoughts, your ideas and even your critique on everything about Norton!

That said, you can apply to be an NIC by visiting theNorton Inner Circle website.

The event started with an ice-breaking session where attendees self-introduce to the crowd.

After that, a quick introduction from Effendy Ibrahim of Norton and what is to be covered in during the latter part of the event.

This evening we also have with us David Hall, Regional Consumer Product Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific. He outlines Symantec’s commitment to the market place and how they have completely reengineered their products to provide the fastest, lightest and strongest protection in the market.

The evening session was later split into 2 Breakout Sessions a.k.a. workshops. (Don’t ask me why they call it such).

Breakout session (1) was called “360 Makeover – a Workshop to Healthier Online Living” and Effendy Ibrahim was the speaker, being Norton’s Family Online Safety expert. This in this workshop highlights steps to create a healthier online living for you and your family.

Breakout session (2) was called “Fast Lives, Fast PCs – Diagnose Your Online Security Needs with Dr. Norton” and you guessed it, our host was none other than David Hall as he presents an overview of Norton products for diagnosing online security needs and how they could easily be customized to suit your need.

The event came to a close by having Q&A sessions with the speakers.

I had talked to both David and Effendy and I must say that looks like Norton’s direction is solid and I hope to see greater improvements soon.

My Thoughts

I’ve been using computers for over 2 decades now and I practically grew up with the ever improving PC performance. The main reason I ditched Norton softwares was because it was resource hogging – and those were Windows 98 days with machines less than half a Gigahertz and RAM that’s not even 256MB. I like it that they’ve stepped up the game by aiming for the 1-10-110 thing – less than a minute installation, less than 10MB memory usage, less than 110MB in size. The last Norton product I ever touched was Norton Brightmail and that was more than 2 years ago.

Today, I’m particularly impressed with the Norton 360 Version 3.0, at least based on the presentation so far. And I’m also thankful to Symantec for providing me a copy of it and I’m sure to test drive it on a few of my machines. 😀 I still have a Duron 1.2ghz with less than 512MB RAM unit ready for testing, just to know whether it is usable even on old machine. That will surely add value to the product, especially since it’s a product that provides COMPLETE protection.

I’m also impressed that Norton is also putting community to good use, I love the idea of collaborating effort in fighting the unsafe elements over the Internet. It’s good to know that Norton doesn’t cover only virus and malwares but also potentially dangerous websites!

Yes, they haven’t got me in the database at the time of this write-up. 😀

Anyway dear ladies and gents, do remember to visit Norton Online Store (South Asia) for more details on their products.

Download a trial copy and give it a try if you may.