Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smooth Protection, 4 Aug 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The concept behind this suite of security programs seems to be for them to work without disturbing you, without forcing you to make technical choices, and without your having to understand much about security. Can Norton 360 deliver? With Symantec's long history of supplying Norton-branded products, you do not have to worry about their ability to stop viruses, spyware, and intrusions. The key question is: will it mess up my computer? There is a risk, because internet security programs have to get right into the workings of Windows.
So first I took these precautions: I uninstalled completely my previous antivirus (AVG), firewall (ZoneAlarm) and anti-spyware (Spybot) programs. Then I used the free CCleaner registry cleaner to remove any traces. If you have EVER used a Norton or Symantec product, even if you think it is long gone, I recommend downloading and running the Norton Removal Tool from the Symantec website. Doing all this preparation is well worth it, as many of the hangups with Norton stem from interference from bits of old programs. After that, I slavishly followed the installation instructions, and all has run sweetly.
Norton 360 has a simple interface, covering its four main jobs. Job number 1 is PC Security -- that's antivirus, antispyware, firewall and email scanning. All the default settings are sensible, and you can leave them alone. Updates are automatic. This is what you paid your money for, and the rest is icing. Job 2 is a simple anti-phishing setup that checks websites. Job 3 is a simple file backup program that you are supposed to use to protect your vital data files from accidental loss. This is a lot better than no backup, but is inferior to most backup programs. Vista users are better off with the built in Vista backup function. You also get 2GB of "secure online storage", and if this is enough for you, you can use it for some backup over the internet. If you want more storage, you can buy it. The file selection is not too intelligent. It picked up all sorts of useless bits of video, music and pictures that really belonged to programs, not to my personal data. Job no.4 is an automatic disk defragmentation, and automatic deletion of old temporary files and internet cache files. Again, Vista users can get this inside Windows, and can switch it off.
Several weeks' experience have shown that Norton 360 is unobtrusive, and quietly works away without bothering me. Compared with other security suites I have used, it demands much less intervention and understanding.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall a good value solution, 31 Oct 2008
OK bit of background first - we have 4 PC's and 1 laptop in the house and I have been building PC for about 10 years and have tried numerous different firewalls,anti virus etc.
I had used Symatec for some years and recommended it to friends but from 2003 the versions it started "eating" more and more machine resources as they were updated and we changed to Zone Alarm for firewalls and AVG for antivirus for friends and family and this is still an effective low cost solution.
However as I was now working away from home I decided to put something on that the family could use without any intervention from me and the full Zone Alarm Security suite was installed on some PC's and the PC-Pro recommended F-Secure suite on others but at the time my Vista Laptop arrived only Norton were offering a solution for Vista so 360 it was.
So after ~ 18 months of running the suites at the same time I would comment as follows:
Zone Alarm - I like this because of the level of flexibility it offers to the more advanced user but the barrage of somewhat strangely worded warnings the firewall generates means that most people would end up blocking things they should not and vice versa (my family have done this quite frequently - particularly after re-install updates where you get something of an avalanche of messages) so this has not really met the "no intervention" I was after.
F-Secure - I don't like this because it is prone to slowing quite powerful machines to an absolute crawl for 10 minutes at a time - the 2008 version is better than the 2007 version we used first but not a complete fix but the firewall seems to just get on with things in the background. Couple of other issues the parental controls is over the top blocking almost averything requireing almost very site to be set up as an allowed site - a major pain and the spam filter seems to have a real problem working on one of the machines but has not required any real input from me and it cover up to three PC's (yes we will be taking this off the machines when it expires).
Norton 360 - works quietly in the background with most updates taking place whist working but once a week it will remind you that you have not run a scan, backed up etc. etc. but there is a single "fix" button so the family are quite happy with this. For information version one was a bit of a resource hog but this seems to have been fixed with version 2 and the full version cover 3 PC's.
So now the new Media PC has arrived it too will be on Norton 360 v2 as will the F-secure based PC when they expire.
Apologies for the length of this but wanted to give some background info into why I would suggest Norton 360 v2 as a good solution.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Class software can't fault it (so far), 3 Jul 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Norton 360
Despite the problems some people have had with this software so far I have had not one single problem as far as installing it. I too had PC Guard on before. I did de install it first prior to installing this software so no problems encountered though it did take time to set the software up along the way. Once its set up you can leave it to get on with it unless you have a task at hand to undertake. With Outlook Express you can use Norton's Anti Spam. The software sets up a spam folder where you can choose to allow certain emails that Norton has chosen as spam to allow them in future. There is also a neat feature where you can input your fave web site passwords into a safe place to save you having to input them every time you visit your Frequent web sites such as Amazon, Play.com etc this saves a lot of time and fuss and you can even input your details to save having to input these when subscribing to services and also your Credit Card can be saved to make it even more secure when purchasing merchandise off the net. Within hours of installing it found a nasty little tracking cookie which my PCGuard didn't detect. Well done Norton.
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