Hello fellow Neowinians!



Symantec has officially launched Norton 360 All-In-One Security Suit, a subscription ($79.99/year) based software bundle which includes antivirus, antispyware, firewall, antiphishing filter, system optimization tools, online backup, and more. For full list of features and system requirements please see the product website linked above.

Like most of savvy computer users, I dumped Norton products few years ago because of the silly system resources consumed by it and because there're "better" and cheaper alternatives available, such as NOD32 and Kaspersky. Now with the launch of the supposedly revamped product from Symantec, I thought it's wrong to stick to my old opinion before trying it first to see if things got improved from 2004+ nightmares.

Still, the old frighten boy inside me couldn't risk installing it on my production environment (Windows XP SP2), so I decided to give it a try on my testing hard disk running Windows Vista Ultimate (final), and I find it a good idea since at some point most users will be using Vista anyway.



Test system specs:

- Windows Vista Ultimate (Running as elevated Administrator, with no ReadyBoost drive used).
- MSI Neo2-P Platinum edition (i865PE) motherboard.
- Intel Pentium 4 3.4E w/HT @ 3.7 GHz.
- 2 GB Hynix PC3200 dual channel @ 436 MHz
- 80GB Western Digital Caviar PATA.



Installation:

So I went to Norton 360 trialware page and downloaded it (49.5 MB). The installer started extracting/installing files process showing some of the product's features on the screen, I liked the simplicity and the speed of the process.

After that, the installer asked for my product key, and as I don't have one yet I choose to run it as 15 days trial, then it ran an automatic Live Update and a quick virus/spyware scan on the critical system locations (took around 3 minutes), it also didn't ask for a system restart, very nice!


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The 360:

If we all can agree on something in Norton products line, I guess it'll be the talented graphics/UI usability staff at Symantec. I'm impressed by the nice interface of Norton 360, clean and comprehensive, also pretty responsive (unlike Norton 200x).

The main window provide access to the main 4 features: PC Security, Transaction Security, Backup and Restore, and PC Tuneup. clicking details under each section takes you to the scanning/running process, and from the web-like links on the top right, you can have access to the common scanning features and application settings.


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PC Security:

Before going into the details, SYMANTEC: where's the "selective scanning" had gone?? I spent like 15 minutes trying to find how to scan a folder/file individually with no luck! I tried every single screen in the program, also there's no right-click menu option on folder/files to do so (like every AV program on planet earth). It seems they are sticking to the 360 concept in scanning! as you should do a 360° system scan each time you wanted to scan something manually!

Actually I wanted to select only one folder to scan so I can compare the engine speed with NOD32's (which I have it installed on my other HDD). I had no choice but to do a full system scan. Fairly enough, and not statistically speaking, the scanning speed IS improved! it "seems" a lot faster than old Nortons, but I still think it's a bit slower than NOD32 in scanning some usual folders "like system32", I wish I could backup my observations with numbers, but unfortunately I don't have the time or patience to leave both AVs scan my entire system (350GB+ of data).

I left it to scan 200,000+ of files and guess what, It found a trojan in my system (in Java folder in my XP HDD), oh my! NOW this is interesting, as NOD32 couldn't detect the threat! The trojan name is: Trojan.ByteVerify, and is identified on (September 10, 2003) what? 2003? *kicking NOD's ass*. The "trojan" seems to be not harmful, and I believe it may be a false positive. It's listed in the program as "High risk", but on Symantec website as "Low risk"! I'll take it as medium then. lol.

The auto-protect and firewall alert window is improved and now it displays a transparent, auto closing, message when a virus is found or something is blocked.

Speaking about firewall, it looks (as in settings and configuration) and works the same as in Norton Personal Firewall.




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Transaction Security:

Norton 360 provides an anti-phishing plug-in for Internet Explorer, the screenshots can speak for themselves.


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Backup and Restore:

Another thing I liked is how straight forward and simple for any novice user to start backing up files, the backups can be stored either on an external HDD or online if you purchase a subscription. Backups can run manually or automatically using a pre-set schedule.


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PC Tuneup:

The usual cleaning stuff and a defragment program.


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Performance/Services/Startup/Memory Usage:

Here's the part you're waiting for, or actually skipped reading the review to find it. Hear it from a person who hated Norton products for quite a long time and advised every living creature to uninstall it: I'm totally IMPRESSED with how Norton 360 deals with the system resources issue! Norton 360 (on Windows Vista), has 2 Services (only one was started), one startup item, and task manager shows only 3 Norton related processes using a whopping 4MB of RAM.

Most importantly, and let me put this in an easy understandable way, Vista without AV vs. Vista with Norton 360, feels like XP without AV vs. XP with NOD32.

Windows boot/startup time: I've used a stopwatch and Norton 360 have added about 11 seconds to the boot time (from the bios to fully usable Windows = 58 sec (vs. 47 sec without Norton), I think using ReadyBoost can improve this area. Beside I don't restart that frequently, so I'm fine with a a bit slower boot time and fine protection and performance inside Windows.

Windows shutdown time: Norton have added 2-3 seconds to it.

A video for my system startup and essential applications launch with Norton 360 installed. (With ReadyBoost Enabled): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4YO_jpOrHU

Applications and copying small/large files between disks work as usual with no noticed slow down!. Hard to believe? Yes, but take my word for it, Norton is back guys!


(Click on the image for the full size)





Un-Installation:

I tried uninstalling Norton 360 from the control panel and the process seemed long (I think longer than the setup itself), but then it asked for restart and after that there was no traces to any Norton files/processes/drivers.




Conclusion/Pros & Cons:

I like Norton 360 more than any Norton/Symantec product ever, and I find it quite logical as well because no company with the least amount of sense will continue to release junk to the market forever and keep getting very bad feedback from users without actually doing something about it. Symantec tried, and IMHO, so far they are on the right track.

There are similar and and may be better performing alternatives for the antivirus part, Like NOD32 and Kaspersky, but for a security suite, Norton 360 will be my choice. If you were avoiding Norton the past years, this is the year to give it another try, and for the die-hard Norton fans: You'll be happy like never before!

Pros:
- Great performance and low system resources usage.
- Good detection rate.
- Pretty nice, clean, and usable interface.

Cons:
- No selective (individual folder/files) manual scanning.
- Quite expensive on the long run compared with other similar offerings.
- The antiphishing toolbar looks ugly in IE7.



Useful links:

- Homepage
- Norton 360 FAQs
- Norton 360 Design Philosophy: User Experience and Performance
- Download a 15 days trial version of Norton 360

=======================

Hope you found that useful as it took me quite some time also if you will copy it, please link to this thread instead. Thanks!

Great Review! I might end up giving this a try when I get back home :-)!

Startup time is not twice the time? Can you test this please... I just don't believe it....
And what is the uninstaller's process? I mean, last time I checked, there where a 3rd Party uninstaller to remove all Norton crap after it's uninstalation and I think that even Symentec made a tool like that...

Anyway, right there, I can say you that it just don't suit me, I can't live without "manual file/folder" scanning.

Startup time is just normal, nothing like slow down, and I've updated that part in the review.

I didn't uninstall it yet, but I'm testing it since yesterday and actually thinking of keeping it, if I uninstalled it I'll feedback here, but if anything and looking how files/processes are structured, I'd say it'll just uninstall like the way it should be, it doesn't look like the old Norton virus

About the manual folder scanning, yes I can't believe it's not there, anyway there's always a possibility that I'm stupid somehow and another user will point it out!

Welcome Milk.

I've lost my faith in Norton when I had to install a plugin in Norton Antivirus 2003 just to get it to work in Windows Security Center. After that, I just moved to Avast! and recently Nod32. I'm happy with what I have and though I may move to Norton in the near future, I'm happy with what I have !

Great review though!

Scirwode

Strange, i am getting a slower startup time here with the trial installed contrary to Tantawi's installation. but i did uninstall it and it went fine unlike the older NAV.
btw, nice review there mate!

Good review Tantawi..

I'll might test this later on eventhough it's Norton...

Great review Tantawi ^^

Norton has indeed vastly improved, but there are a couple of things aside from the cost that make me not want to use Norton 360.
These are:

Backups. I manage backups myself using Acronis TrueImage, and there doesn't seem to be a way to tell Norton 360 that. It keeps reminding me to set my backup schedule.

Phishing toolbar. Whilst the Symantec phishing security is very good, having it enabled results in IE7 taking considerably longer to close when you exit the application. Also a delay is noticable when opening new tabs.
Whether it's just me, but also there was a noticable delay when clicking on links in a Google search to when IE started to resolve the URL.

Aside from these 2 points, I can't fault it really. Although I'd like to be able to see exactly what LiveUpdate is downloading, but heh that's not that important really.


Again, well done on the excellent review

Aftershock about the "good" verdict on a Norton AV:

Well, it seems Norton is getting better.
I must try this for future talk with clients and NW members but as I said, I'm not interested.
Thanks Tantawi for the review, with this I will clearly this this out and share my results and benchmark with you.

Thumps up for the thorough review bud.

Maybe I'll check this thing out one day for the good word you've put about it.

Thank you all, I'm glade it was useful.

I've updated it with the uninstall experiences, and a more accurate Windows startup performance.

Nice review there Although, I'm not ready to try Norton again....yet.

any reviews on Norton Internet Security 2007 v2 (aka Vista ready)?

Excellent read, does the backup act & be used like Norton Ghost 9 & 10?

Excellent review!!!

Schnitzel, I've reinstalled Norton 360 to check those issues.

For the backup, it just nags about configuring it, I opened the configuration screen and set it to manual and now it no longer complain about it "green".

For the fishing toolbar in IE, I opened the "Manage add-ins" window and diasabled the two Norton components, and now I don't have the antiphishing filter enabled in IE ofcourse, but Norton still puts the "green mark" on it and never complain. I know that seems not really a solution but I don't use IE anyway

Welcome everyone and If you want to test anything just tell me

I must say that my experience with norton has been very good since 2003 and my good experience continues even today when i played around with norton-360 for an hour...

it was very light on my pc...no performance drag or something.............i think people should grow-up and use norton's recent version like 2006-7 and find out the difference........

I did, and I found it horribly slow, and there are better free alternatives -- Not sure about Norton 360 however.

Heh, very good of you to go to the effort to test those things! Although I wasn't implying I wanted you to do that in my post, just incase you thought I was

Glad to hear that I can get around the backup "Issue".
Just out of interest, I assume when you've disabled the 2 Norton IE Add-ins, and the IE Bar has gone but you still have the green tick, the Norton phishing protection is indeed off, so you'd be able to visit phished sites, although one could always re-enable the default IE7 phishing abilitiy.

I might have another play around with it later inlight of your findings.
One thing I've always wondered about though, is the detection rates of the AntiVirus component.

Fortunately, they now offer the AV updates daily, rather than weekly. But usually (by checking their site) each day only a few definitions are added, sometimes none at all. The list can be viewed here. Currently, I'm using NOD32. There seems to be many more detections added per day, not that this means either are better as Norton probably has less false positives, but it's just a thought

I also like the way you cannot terminate the protection offered by the newer Norton products, unfortunately NOD32's protection can be disabled in the current version.

Thanks for testing these extra things, I hope you didn't go to too much trouble

You're most welcome!

And you're right, what's important is the actual protection, and I'm a bit happy that it found a trojan on my PC "whether it's a false positive or not" but it makes it feels superior than NOD32 in terms of the protection factor.

For Legendkiller, This review is about 360 only I can't even be bothered to speak about the whole 2004+ line, even 2007, it's a disaster man! didn't you find a very noticeable difference between 2007 and the new 360?

Edited the review to add a video file for the boot/startup process!

WoW, excellent review I'm downloading the trail version -- Let's give a try, you encouraged me

Yeah gotta say, superb review mate!

From: http://www.symantec.com/norton360/about/n360faq.html

Welcome Amano and MichaelBL

Updated to include those links:

- Homepage
- Norton 360 FAQs
- Norton 360 Design Philosophy: User Experience and Performance
- Download a 15 days trial version of Norton 360

Nice review!

I did install the trial version, problem was it didn't uninstall NIS2007 properly.

It left the protection centre still installed.

I used the Norton Removal tool to totally remove NIS2007 before install.

I would suggest anyone that wants to install the trial, remove windows defender first as Norton 360 prompts to remove it anyway, then use the Norton Removal tool to remove Norton previous versions.

After reboot, I installed 360, it was smooth and didn't require a reboot, updated it, did a quick scan, disabelled backup utility and found my computer system works 20% quicker +

Shame they don't do a 30 day trial rather than a 15 day trial, as I cannot buy this item from my retailer till around March 18th & won't receive it till about the 25th.

your review almost makes me want to try it (on my parents pc lol). They have nav 2007 on there now, got it free with a new pc. It says free upgrade to vista compatible product though so I wonder if they can get 360 for free?

Norton 360?!? What were they thinking with that name? Xbox 360, Norton 360 =\.

But oh well.. I haven't been pleased with any Norton products for quite a long time. The main reason is their pricing, why should I have to buy a new box copy of Norton every year? Some of the greatest anti-viruses (meaning better then Norton) only have a subscription fee every year or so, but all program updates/revisions are part of that subscription.

WOW what a review...! I also moved from norton to kaspersky due to the resources but after reading that makes me want to give norton ago

I tend to find the most complained about thing to do with Norton is resources.

If you're on the bare minimum r.a.m. installed then it's not advisable to use it, rather though to use AVG
& zone alarm

Nice review. I'll probably give it a try on one of my test machines (have to go to my parents house and let them try it, my family puts computers through hell more then anyone else I know)

I think I'll still stick with Kaspersky.

Hi,

I am a retail tech for a company whom I cannot name.... let's just say thier initials are G.S.

I was a fan of Nortons for years but after the 2003 release I felt it started to get way to bloated and I backed off and switched to Zonealarm Free and NOD32 once I became aware of it. I used AVG free between somewhere.

We have done a lot of tests with 360 on many different configurations of XP SP2 and Vista. While I did not find it as stable as some on any of my Vista builds I think the initial release of 360 for XP SP2 is as good as it is going to get. It beat out almost all the other AVs in general tests but when compared to whe footprint and enhanced code the systems ran much smoother under full loads with the client enabled. Overall tests proved at least to me that I will get solid protection in one piece of software and not have to suffer with a laggy system.

And NO I do not work for nor do I endorse Symantec. In fact as I said I stopped using them and recommended against then for a few years. I am going back to Norton with 360 on my next fresh install, and I do recommend a fresh install if you are upgrading from an earlier version.

Cheers,

hmm dunno if i should use it.... :\

You should, by the sounds of it they did a really good job with this release.

meh, i only got $30 off, why didn't i get a free copy !!!

Good review. I'm glad to see Symantec might finally be starting to get their act together.

yeah ... that video it's great . thanks .

Good review indeed, I use NIS 2007 v2 currently and performance/features are great.

Norton 360 won't have a place on my PC though, since I use Acronis TrueImage for backup.

Radish™

I knew it is compatible with vista 64, anyone knows whether it is compatible with xp x64 (2003 x64)?

ok, i got answer. norton 360 doesn't support xp x64. Too bad...

Hey there, I actually helped Beta Test Norton 360 and got the coupon in my email for the $30 off, but I accidentally trashed that email.

I can't even find an email to email Symantec about this, does anyone have a copy of that email? And how does it, will they verify my email address with the email I used to sign up for the beta?

I tried Norton 360 after reading this thread.

Yes it takes very little memory and is far faster than previous Symantec creations. But I double click on "My Computer" and it takes longer than usual to load. I double click on C: Drive and then back "Up" and Explorer is blank, its only for about 3 seconds, but that's long enough for me to think if this is how Norton 360 is meant to impact on a Core 2 Duo with loads of RAM and Fast SATA II Hard Disks. I then start browsing through folders, there is a noticeable lag there too.

Norton is only a temporary visitor on my PC. My utility box runs NOD32 and its perfect. My gam3rz r0xx0r b0xx0r runs registered AntiVir and there is no noticeable impact on performance and both of these product score better than Norton.

If I were to write a review I would say that Norton 360 is an improvement over previous resource hogging versions, but its not 100% better at best maybe 30% better than previous Norton Antivirus packages.

Currently, am using Rogers Yahoo! Norton Security Online version 10.2.0.30

Uses one process, and it uses less then 800k of ram.
in the processes tab, there are five of them.

What's the IE7 Add-on (name) that disables Norton's Phishing filter?

Good review But I still prefer Kaspersky Anti-Virus

One of the best reviews I've seen here

I tried the trial version (I was in beta but could'nt install in my system for some reason), the only thing about this program is you cannot customize the firewall and antivirus, backup utility just suks. I bought Internet Security 2007 couple of months ago I think I will stick to that until they come out with better software, don't get me wrong norton has a great concept but just did'nt took as much time to work at it.



Yeah me too , can I have that e-mail too.

Like most of u I've used norton products b4& found that the system just clamps up.

However 360 is totaly different, it runs smoothly in the background& doesnt interupt my computer use or slow down my browser.
In fact i find even running a full scan it doesnt clog the system2much, i find my spyware doctor uses more system resource.

I also found the right click&not being able 2scan a single file strange but dont worry, 360 automatically scan that folder/file on entry
and it has picked up trojans&malware issues.

All in all its the best norton product so far &I wont change back2 my old AV&firewall apps.

Throughout 2006 I had a total of three Symantec products running: Norton Anti-Virus, Norton Systemworks, and Norton Firewall. In 2007 I saw that Symantec had released Norton 360 as a consolidation of their main PC security and maintenance components, and was happy to try it out.

I have been using the various Norton suites for several years now and have never really had any major issues with them. In the past, Norton has let you customize just about every setting. You could recieve updates when/if you want, you could schedule your scans or do them manually, and most importantly, you get detailed descriptions of what Norton is doing! With Norton 360, it appears that Symentec is trying to take the term "user friendly" to new levels.

In the previous versions of Norton, during updates you were presented with a little window that had a list of all of the components that were being updated, their file sizes, and the progress of each individual download and installation. You were also able to see if a particular update failed at the moment it failed.

In Norton 360 you are just presented with a progress animation, no details whatsoever other than "downloading" and "installing". You could have had a computer freeze, or an error, and you wouldn't know until it supposedly finished. You also don't know if you are actually downloading updated virus definitions, or just some little miscellaneous Norton update that could have waited until another time.

Also, you have no option regarding automatic updates or scanning on computer startup. Sure, you can turn off various features, but then you will be presented with a scary red X on your system tray icon. Who wants that? You are also forced to enable Automatic Windows Updates for the exact same reason.


I am the kind of user that will happily manually update or scan every day or every couple of days. But I don't like to be forced to do it by a piece of software. The protection that I have recieved from Norton 360 has been top quality as per the usual Symentec standard, but the experience of using the product is making me lean toward alternatives.

The single mistake they made with this product is in not including features for an experienced user who doesn't want to be coddled.

* * * * *


I was also dissapointed by this. More than once after finding this out have I caught myself right-clicking on a file to scan it.


Hm... coming from using Norton Systemworks for many years, I was somewhat dissapointed with 360's optimization feature. As with the updates, this also does not show any sort of file details, percent fragmented, percent of optimization being completed. The native Windows defrag tool is more useful in terms of the imformation displayed.


I was as well. Before I uninstalled all of my old Norton programs, I counted the background programs running and I think I had 8-10 (don't recall exactly). With 360 they've managed to integrate several services into one, ccSvcHst.exe, which controlls Live Update notifications and manages other events for the program; and ccApp.exe which I believe is an active session of the antivirus program. There are a couple of others as well, but nowhere near the bloat I had previously.

So, no issues with LUCallBackProxy.exe for you guys?

I uninstalled Norton 360, installed BitDefender, and my computer runs sooooo much faster, especially at boot. And I don't exactly have a slouch machine (Pentium D @ 3.0 Ghz, 3GB RAM, Win XP Pro SP2).

LUCallBackProxy.exe is a process that runs in the background (sometimes multiple instances of it) when the Live Update is connecting to the Symantec web server. This will normally occur after a PC reboot. It should go away after about 10 minutes or so, when the update is complete.

Did you have more specific problems with it?