Security software giant Symantec has ‘reintroduced’ Norton Utilities, a product nameplate that pre-dates the Internet and virtually all of the products you are probably familiar with that bear the Norton name.

When Microsoft (MS) Windows came into its own and started providing more and more of its own built-in system optimization and tweaking tools, third party utility suits like the iconic Norton package faded from popularity.

Now, Symantec VP Rowan Trollope says, the tanking economy and persistent performance issues with recent versions of Windows have conspired to trigger the rebirth of a classic.

“In today’s economic climate, we’re all trying to do more with what we’ve already got,” Trollope observes. “Norton Utilities provides the tools to give your PC an instant tune-up and get it running like new again. Whether it’s a new PC that you want to maintain or an older one whose performance is dragging, Norton Utilities tunes-up, tweaks and maintains your PC to ensure you get the most mileage out of it.”

The lead utilities in the new Norton suite include:

• Startup Manager & Services Manager – Manages programs configured to run at system startup.
• Registry Cleaner – Cleans the registry of unnecessary entries created during the installation, de-installation and normal work on the PC.
• Registry Defragmenter – Analyzes the registry for errors and rebuilds it completely from scratch if needed. Defragments and corrects any structural errors.
• Disk Cleaner – Scrubs the hard disk of temporary files, Internet cookies, and other junk data.
• Performances Test – Benchmarks a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compares the results before and after changes.

We’re particularly glad to see a new third party Start-Up Manager and Registry Cleaner which, together, one hopes will allow users to easily obliterate the crapware from their factory-configured PCs in a more-straightforward manner than Windows’ own tools do, and accelerate their Windows XP and Vista performance considerably. In fact, Symantec proudly reports an independent test by PassMark Labs showed that a run-of-the-mill Windows XP machine started up 16 per cent faster after running the new Norton Utilities than it did before the tune-up. You can try a similar test on your own machine by running the Norton Performance Test before and after you run the other utilities.

The new Norton Utilities is available now at a suggested retail price of (US)$49.95 for a package you can run on up to three PCs. That price includes free 24×7 email, chat and Web support.