Symantec claims its 2009 Internet Security products will have “zero impact” on PC performance.

Norton Internet Security was once infamous for hogging system resources, but has placed significantly less demand on PCs in recent releases.

Now, Symantec claims this autumn’s product refresh will have no perceptible impact on PC performance. “People have told us ’security software is too big, it irritates me, I turn it off when I’m gaming’,” said Janice Chaffin, group president for Symantec’s consumer business in an exclusive briefing with PC Pro this morning.

“Fundamentally, consumers don’t want to be bothered at all. We’ve set as our goal zero-impact security,” she said.

The company has a number of ambitious performance targets for the 2009 products. Installation will take less than a minute, compared to the eight-minute average of today’s products. And the client software will have an install footprint of only 100MB, compared with 2008’s 400MB.

Are customers really bothered about a 400MB install in these days of terabyte hard disks? Symantec’s Con Mallon says it’s largely a symbolic gesture. “We’re trying to do it for perception,” said the company’s regional product marketing director. “If we’re at 400 meg and the guy next door is on 200 meg, they say ‘you’re bloated’.”