Norton Internet Security 2010 has a comprehensive set of features, top-notch malware detection, and reasonable speed. Symantec has been investing in technology that detects malware by its behavior, and it shows in this release, further bolstering this historically strong performer.

Norton Internet Security 2010 interface is nicely laid out, but its peculiar use of color (a black main window with orange accents) makes it tough to read. The left panel displays a CPU performance gauge, which may or may not be useful to you. The middle column has three sections: Computer (for desktop operations), Network (for connections to the Internet or other PCs), and Web (for browser protection settings). The right column shows configuration options for each of the three subsections. The problem is that the notifications, in green and red text, were sometimes hard to see against the black background.

Norton was one of the top performers in detecting and cleaning up active malware infections on a PC. It found all the bad software, disabled 93 percent of it and removed all traces of two-thirds of the software--the best scores of any product we tested.

Norton detected 93 percent of inactive rootkits, but detected and removed all active rootkits. This is a very solid score for this test.