Norton Utilities brand revived for Windows XP, Vista
Symantec brings cleanup tools back to life
By Ellen Messmer,Network World , 02/03/2009
Symantec Tuesday announced it has revived the Norton Utilities optimization and cleanup tools for Windows that it folded years ago into a broader package after acquiring Norton.
Symantec product manager Robert Reynolds recalls the early days of
DOS computers in the 1980s when Peter Norton first came up with his computer tune-up toolkit, and notes that the world is far more complex now in terms of applications that consumers enjoy, whether it be instant messaging, Skype, Twitter or YouTube.
The release of Norton Utilities for Windows XP and Vista is intended to address the "clutter" on PCs that slows down performance, Reynolds says. (Compare
client management products.)
"Multiple tabs in the browser, Twitter, you name it," Reynolds says. "At boot time, when you first turn it on, there's a period of time before it's functional when third-party applications are loading services into memory." Sometimes this clutter can also impact general stability of the PC.
