Disabling the Automatic Download of New Version option in NIS (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Download of New Versions | OFF) should prevent LiveUpdate from delivering version updates (e.g., from v. 18.1.0.37 to v. 18.5.0.125) in addition to preventing product upgrades (e.g., from NIS 2010 to NIS 2011).
I have a dial-up Internet connection and I my NIS 2011 was automatically updated from from v. 18.1.0.37 to 18.5.0.125 via a maual LiveUpdate even though I had disabled the Automatic Download of New Version setting. This update was approx. 25 MB and took over an hour to download on my dial-up connection. If I'd had the option to decline the version update I could have taken my laptop somewhere with free public WiFi and downloaded it there in a matter of minutes.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 (32-bit) * IE 8 * NIS 2011 v. 18.5.0.125 * NU v. 14.5.0.120 HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
I think the wording of the "automatic download" option is a bit misleading. I think the wording should be changed to something like "Automatic Download of New Product Year" or something similar to make it more clear that it refers to a change from say NIS 2010 to NIS 2011.
The following Norton Idea suggests de-coupling Live Update and pulse updates so that they can be turned ON and OFF independantly of each other. In essence allowing live update to be turned OFF while leaving pulse updates on so one can still receive definition updates.
We agree that it is a good idea to give users more control over what is downloaded and when. We are looking at this now, and expect to have a solution in the future. Stay tuned!