Norton 360

June 10, 2007 02:16
Mediocre
1.0/5
What I Hate About Norton 360
I am profoundly disappointed that the Norton product name, which in the early days of the PC was associated with everything that was right about taking control and managing your computer environment, has fallen to the level of Symantec corporate group think. The best thing I can compare it to is AOL, which attempts to take total control of your computer because clearly they know best and you, the user, are an idiot.

INSTALLATION
I started with a new HP Pavilion laptop, having gone out of my way to find one with Windows XP installed instead of Vista. It came with a Norton antivirus product with a 90 day trial license; I don't remember specifically which one it was, but the user interface and performance were both familiar and satisfactory. About 6 weeks before the trial period ended, the warning messages started -- OHMYGODYOUWILLSOONBEUNPROTECTED! DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! Clearly, the Bush Administration has not cornered the market of Fear Mongering. I put up with these annoying popups on my system for several weeks. At the time of my choosing, I opted to buy an annual license for the product. My web browser popped up and gave me a choice of buying the same product, or buying the new and more comprehensive Norton 360 package at a discount (which turned out to be $30 higher than comparable deals that appeared in the following Sunday paper).

Having a single package instead of a half dozen different programs appealed to my desire for efficiency, so I bought it. Installation went as planned, and I began to learn about the programs shortcomings.

A few weeks later, I began getting popup error messages about a feature that was never explained in the program setup or in the error messages: "Symantec Network Proxy Service has encountered a problem and needs to close". When this happens in the program that has planted itself on your system as the great protector, it makes you uneasy at best. When the messages became frequent and annoying enough, I asked Symantec for help. Oh yes, they recognize the problem, they've seen it before. My instructions were to uninstall and reinstall the program. In other words, we're only pretending that we have a clue why this happens but your time is of no consequence to us so here's how you should spend an afternoon. I did, and the messages have stopped -- so far. I have been instilled, of course, with zero confidence that the problem will not recur since I don't know what caused the problem in the first place. And neither does Symantec. A repair patch or program update would have at least lulled me into believing "problem solved."

In spite of these annoyances, I foolishly decided I should install this comprehensive protection package on my wife's computer. Looking on my online Symantec account, I was able to find the option to buy another license for another computer, but I was not able to find the license for my existing download to tell me how many household systems I was entitled to install it on. I visited my local software store and saw that the Norton 360 packages (all of which were by now 50% cheaper than I had paid for mine) entitled the buyer to install the software on up to three household computers. OK, since I had paid more for the same product, surely I was justified in two installations.

With that build up in the story, you're probably expecting me to tell you how the installation on my wife's computer was denied. No, that wasn't the case. Instead, I removed her old Norton anti-virus, all the time listening to my wife asking why I was infiltrating her computer with software that I didn't seem to be the least bit happy with myself. These are the things that men do sometimes. I installed the software and rebooted the system (also Windows XP), which immediately went into the Norton 360 configuration screen, apparently gathering system information. I had to guess that's what it was doing, because it didn't tell me anything, it didn't allow me to do anything else, and it didn't end. This went on overnight and for several hours longer than a full virus scan and defrag should have taken. Fortunately, even the cleverest software programmers cannot disable the power switch. I killed the system cold and rebooted. Once again, the Norton 360 configuration window took over the system. On the third power down and reboot, I managed to open the Add & Remove Programs control panel and removed Norton 360 from her system, even while it was still purportedly configuring itself. I won't be putting it back on her system.

USER INTERFACE
The main window pops up from the task bar with four status flags and some high level task choices. Because I have my backup routine set to Manual (see BACKUP section below), I don't get a green 'good to go' check mark, I get a dismal grey 'Disabled' indicator. Shame on me for not letting Norton 360 run things for me.

Every time I click on a task or option, another window opens. If you drill deep enough, you can have your whole desk top cluttered with additional windows that don't replace each other. Just when you're getting used to this new window format, you finish a task and close the window instead of selecting the BACK button (which is nothing like the BACK arrow on a web browser), and you are back several levels farther than you wanted to go instead of just back to the prior screen that you had come from. Apparently, Symantec programmers have never seen how a browser window works.

BACKUP
The backup routine is incredibly slow in everything it does.

It begins by scanning your system to find all files that match pre-determined file types. Almost. The fact is that it scans the C: drive. This is a fair assumption for older systems. My HP Pavilion has a 240Gb hard drive in the form of two separate 120Gb drives, C: and D:. All of my data is on D:, but Norton 360 doesn't recognize this. It marks all of the C: files that match their standard file types, even if they are meaningless to me.

To set up the directories for backup, the necessary window opens and scans your entire hard drive to count the files that had already been marked for backup. With a 240Gb system drive, this takes a long time. To select the directories I want to back up, I open the selection window and tunnel down to the directory I want to select. I can pick one. If I want another one, even several of the adjacent directories on that screen, I can pick one. I have to open the select window separately for each one. Because my time is cheap, and some programmers have never heard of selecting multiple entries while holding down the Control or Shift key. After I have painstakingly selected all of the directories I want to back up, there is a penalty to pay for wanting to choose more. Because now that I have chosen all of these directories to back up, the next time I open the window to set up my backup parameters, the program will once again scan my entire system to give me an exact, up to the minute count of how many files I have marked and how much space I will need for the next backup. This invaluable information, which again takes a long time on my 240Gb system but it's OK because my time is cheap, is totally worthless. I don't need to know the total size of my backup requirements. I might be interested in how many new files there are that haven't been backup up yet, but even that information is not worth my time if my intention is to run a backup anyway.

The backup process itself apparently scans every marked directory & file to see if the filed already backed up needs to be replaced or not. I can't imagine any other reason why the process takes so long and the backed-up file count increments so incredibly slowly. Even if I only have a dozen files that have changed since the last backup, the scan still takes hours. I don't suppose anyone at Symantec knows how to maintain a database of files & directories to be backed up, and mark changes & additions in real time for a quick backup procedure. For years I had used DOS XCOPY to do backups based on the archive "A" file attribute. Not very sophisticated, but at least I got what I paid for.

The backup routine copies files individually, in standard format so they can be recovered individually very easily with Windows Explorer. This is good. But there is no intelligence built in to recognize when I move or delete files, so duplicate files and trash files accumulate indefinitely on my backup drive. My DOS XCOPY batch routine had this much intelligence, it was a lot cheaper, and a lot faster.

I do my backup on a remote drive that is not always connected. In order to avoid inane error messages for automatic backup, I have had to disable automatic backup and set it to manual, which gives me inane messages about not being fully protected. When I did allow it once to do the complete protection regimen with my backup drive connected, the program informed me that the backup on the remote drive appeared to be from another computer, gave me an option to over-write it or not, and sat there all night waiting for instructions instead of finishing its long routine. Why Norton 360 did not recognize that it had created that backup in manual mode is undoubtedly a feature of Symantec's product, like the numerous undocumented features that Microsoft has given us over the years.

FIREWALL
As with any new firewall setup, windows pop up initially as I teach Norton 360 what is valid access. The generic pop up informs me that "A Program Is Trying To Access the Internet". In order to find out WHICH program, I have to click a link and open an expansion of the same popup window. I am baffled why this expanded window would not have been the obvious choice to present in the first place. Once again, Symantec's programmers have made clear the value that they place on my time.

ANTI-SPAM
After running a scan, a window informs me how many items I have been protected from. It takes me 2-3 more clicks to find out what the items are, and I have an option to restore them. I don't have an option to delete them permanently. Therefore, as far as I know, their status is indeterminate, probably quarantined somewhere on my hard drive and wasting drive space until the end of time. If there is any program feature that prevents these items, once found, from ever bothering me again, I have no way of knowing.

DISK CLEANUP
Norton 360 decides who lives and who dies, and I don't have much to say about it. This can be especially annoying with browser cookies that I WANT to keep because they make my login automatic, or my TV Guide local listing profile come up formatted the way I want it. Cache Cleaner, a freeware program, does a much better job of letting me manage my computer the way I want to.

EPITAPH (or EPITHET?)
I won't be installing this software on any other computers.

As long as it doesn't force me to reinstall itself on my computer, I will probably tolerate it for the year I paid for. Unless there are some significant upgrades both in performance and in user interface, I won't be renewing my license. The inconvenience of managing system protection through several separate programs was nothing compared to the inconvenience of this all-in-one we'll-protect-you-because-you're-too-dumb-to-do-it-yourself package.

Oh, I suppose there's a market for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, the product purchase was not preceded by a mandatory market survey of user habits, patience and skill levels to warn me that I may not be the target market.

- Warpo Marx

November 5, 2007 08:07
Terrible
0.5/5
I have used Norton for years without issue. 360 messed up all 3 of my computers and once you put it on, you can't just take it off to fix the issues. If you have Quickbooks- watch out! This program has many compatability issues and will cause many more probems than it will fix.

Trying to get answers from Symantec is even harder than dealing with the product. Whenever I try to Chat or send contact them via the web I get an error saying windows has to close. Their live update won't even connect. STAY AWAY!

- dwassel

March 2, 2007 12:05

4.5/5
After using Norton Internet security 2006 and earlier version, I was quite turned off with Symantec products. But this is an amazing improvement over their past history of products causing machine slow downs.
I tested N 360 Beta on my HP laptop with an AMD Turion 64 bit processor and 512 MB RAM. No problems till date..system is performing just fine..

- arjun78

March 21, 2007 07:45
Good
1.5/5
I tried to install Norton 360 and it first uninstalled Windows Defender and then attempted to uninstall Norton SystemWorks. It tried 3 times to do the uninstall but apparently failed each time, though the only indication of failure was that it kept tring to uninstall it again. I contacted Symantec support via Chat, which worked OK. They provided a Norton Removal Tool.

The problem is that I still want to use the utilities in SystemWorks that aren't duplicated in Norton 360 (e.g. Undelete, defrag, etc.). Why would Symantec make these two products incompatible with each other?

Bottom line - I'm returning 360.

- halj78727

June 7, 2007 07:43
Mediocre
1.0/5
The problem is: ccSvcHst.exe uses >95% of the CPU and runs continually for more than 30 minutes. This means that when my computer is booted-up and all other programs have completed loading; it will continue running for 30 minutes (or more) while using more than 95% of my CPU capacity making it (useless) for running other programs. I might have been able to LIVE with the problem if I could pause the program however, this program DOES NOT have a way to pause it!

There is obviously a deficiency in the design of the program. All of the technical suggestions and steps from Symantec technicians have proven to be fruitless! Check the customer comments regarding this program at CNET.com (http://reviews.cnet.com/internet-security-and-firewall/norton-360/4852-3667_7-32330411.html?tag=uoavrg) and you will find that it has a satisfaction rating of ONLY 49.9% (from 105 users). That's VERY bad for a product that should have been rated at more that 90%!

I believe my only recourse at this time is to remove Norton 360 from my computer and purchase another computer security program (non-Symantec). I purchased this program (in good faith) based on my previous (positive) experiences with Norton software and I am significantly disappointed with the Norton 360 product. Norton 360 has not lived-up to the performance lauded for it!

- edebler

March 2, 2007 09:19
Spectacular
2.5/5
Along with the new year, the infosecurity software firms have brought us a new class of tools which are billed as the ultimate in computer security: apps which allow us all to leave out cyber worries behind. The idea behind each of these apps is they will do the "hard work" of keeping your PC safe. Not a bad idea as the internet has become more and more like Dodge City at high noon of late. As a result, protecting your PC has become increasingly difficult. However, the notion of removing my brain from the
loop is disconcerting.

Between Microsoft "One Care", McAfee "Total Security" and Norton 360, the latter is head and shoulders above the competetion in terms of actually protecting your PC from the bugs and a myriad of other dasterdly creatures looking for an easily exploitable hole in your security software. IE-Something that will create a real mess in your computer. While 360 is the "best of breed," unless you are brain-dead, this type of security application will bother you. Why? It is never clear exactly what the software is doing to make your PC safe. The most trouble aspect of these packages should make anyone ask precisely what data is being gathered about your PC use habits without your consent? Microsoft has been nailed for abusing this right in the past, yet continues to gather info through their "Valadation" program. In short, this would drive even an experienced novice user crazy and if you know enough to setup this program, I would take my business to a full service internet security package.

If you are in the market for "Dick and Jane" level security, learn a good deal more about your PC. Certainly, enough so that giving away your ability to make decisions about computer security just seems dumb-It is!.

- buzzy1400

March 1, 2007 07:05

3.0/5
I was rather surprised that the CNET review didn't make any mention of the price of this product versus the other security suites. I did some digging on the Symantec site, and had to read through their FAQ to find out that it wasn't a one time purchase, but rather an anual subscription. Further more, they don't tell you what it will cost to resubscribe. While it's rather rare that such products don't have fees, they are still an important part of a purchasing decision, and 1) should be covered in the CNET review and 2) need to be disclosed in advance by the vendor. Buyer be ware of thise one.

- feliusrex

November 29, 2007 04:38
Terrible
0.5/5
Don't waste your money on this one. It will slow your machine to a crawl and not give you basic protection, then the factory will give less than any help brfore asking for more money. I paid about $100 for the program and to fix my computer they wanted another $100.00. What a waste of money, live and learn.

- ripper1a

March 1, 2007 08:43

4.5/5
I have BETA tested this product for nearly 4months now. Norton 360 is a big improvement over its previous models. With this version you get everything you could possibly need from a security software. I was quite surprised to find out that this version does not use as much resources as before. 360 rubs smooth on any computer capable of running XP. Vista problems have since been corrected but it still has minor battles with the new OS. This will change over the next few weeks/months as Norton issues new updates. 360's new layout is both a blessing and a sin. I love the new interface and sleek buttons. It fits right in with Vista and looks sexy... Well for a security software atleast... On the other hand getting to some of the features can be quite irratating. It takes some time to get used to it. By default Norton attempts to learn the programs you have but I noticed it did give me some problems with some programs. The old versions would give me a pop-up on just about everthing but 360 is stingy. I had to manualy go in and change some programs which was sometimes difficult to do. So remember this. When in doubt, turn off your firewall and see if your program can connect to the internet. To sum things up, 360 will take a little getting used to by old Norton users since they fianlly ditched that tired old layout. A few other minor problems plaque 360 but they are what you expect from a security program. Nothing is perfect. Norton 360 is a something I advise users to buy in the near future.

- Cornickcat123

March 1, 2007 04:01

3.0/5
Norton 360 is a good product I like it. I just had problems with it on Vista. I installed it on my laptop with XP and had no problems. On my vista computer it installed ok but then windows security center would come up saying you have no firewall or virus scanner. Well I call support and the guy really couldnt help me because they dont know much about Vista or like he said they dont know how it will react on vista. Well I did some research and there are settings in vista to manage the firewall and virus scanner your self because vista will not recognize some 2nd, 3rd party firewalls and/or virus scanners. The other thing that upset me a bit was when I went to download the extras apparently they wont be ready till March 15th. All in all it works and yes I agree better than One Care.

- beastcmg