[Review] Norton 360 Full Review

[Jojo81]

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?

[MadFerIt]

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.

[digitalsoft]

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 :D

[leesmithg]

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 :D

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

[Marshalus Veteran]

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.

[devnulllore]

Hi,

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

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,

[Digitalx]

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

Hi Anthony,

Because of the feedback you've contributed to project Genesis (Norton 360), you will be receiving the a Not For Resale (NFR) copy of Norton 360.

If you chose to receive a physical copy of the product, please be patient as this process may take a few months. If you chose to download the Norton 360 NFR, you will be given access to the build shortly. Testers who chose to receive a physically copy will not be given access to the Norton 360 NFR download.

Thanks again for all your help no this project. Your feedback directly contributed to the success of this new Symantec product, and the Norton 360 team is very grateful for all your work.

Cheers,

Tony Weiss

Sr. Beta Test Coordinator

Symantec Corporation

[Popcorned1]

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

[MiG-]

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

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

[+virtorio MVC]

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

[Cosmin]

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

[RadishTM Veteran]

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?

[Sweet Butterfly]

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

[Sweet Butterfly]

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

[MitchLeBlanc]

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?

[Sockie]

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. :ermm: 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.

[Allan]

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.

[DoubleApex]

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

[Dance.]

Good review :) But I still prefer Kaspersky Anti-Virus :)

[L3thal Veteran]

One of the best reviews I've seen here :yes:

[Neo003]

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.

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?

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

[nrg460]

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

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¬ 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.

[SakuraKira]

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.

* * * * *

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

The usual cleaning stuff and a defragment program.

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'm totally IMPRESSED with how Norton 360 deals with the system resources issue!

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.

[soniqstylz]

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).

[SakuraKira]

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

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?