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Norton Antispam 2004

Norton Antispam 2004

List Price: $39.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Buggy software, truly pathetic technical support
Review: I am a sophisticated user with 20 years of PC experience and a very clean and well maintained PC. When I encountered an error with Norton AntiSpam 2004 and Outlook XP I was quite rigorous about verifying the problem. I uninstalled and re-installed the software. I tried various configurations. In all, I spent more than six hours trying to resolve the error; I came to the determination that the error was a bug in Norton AntiSpam.

I documented my findings in meticulous detail and submitted the report to Symantec. I can honestly say that I have never encountered more pathetic technical support than Symantec. I submitted three separate reports, and each reply was a canned response with cut-and-paste solutions (literally, I could see the '>' characters showing that they were simply forwarding me solutions from other cases) that had nothing to do with the error I was reporting. Not only were they not helping to track down the bug, they were not even reading my reports (in one reply, they said this was a known problem with Outlook Express ... when I had clearly communicated that the problem was with Outlook XP). Furthermore, there is no mechanism for escalating the problem report. And phone support is $30 a pop.

I ordered Norton AntiSpam 2004 before the earlier reviews, all of which report bugs and troubles, were posted on Amazon. Hopefully my review and the others will save you the troubles of this buggy product, and save you from the awful Symantec tech support.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Doesn't work with Eudora
Review: Installed NAS, no problems, then rebooted. Invoked Eudora 5.1. Got the message "NAS has detected that COM automation is turned off, would you like to enable COM automation?" I click yes, then close Eudora as directed and reinvoke - same problem. When I look in Eudora's configurations, COM automation IS turned on.

Went to Symmatec's web site and did a search for the problem. There is an entry in their automated system about this and they basically say its a known problem with no solution at this time. They claim the problem occurs when you do not use the default folder for storing your mail files - I use the default.

Bottom line - Symmantec acknowledges a problem with Eudora that has not solution. I do have a pretty yellow box sitting on my desk - AntiSpam my eye!! It's completely useless.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Maybe they shipped it too soon?
Review: I needed a spam solution.

I had Outlook rules that helped a lot, but I was sick of the spam. That's why I got AntiSpam 2004. But AntiSpam 2004 is not a spam solution, at least not a good one.

It must be meant for people who get like 1 or 2 spam emails a week - and who don't mind manually deleting them, to boot.

The more spam I get the slower and the slower and the slower and the slower and the slower it runs. Adding emails to the spam list is painfully slow and I had to turn back on my Outlook rules because it missed so much spam.

I would guess that AntiSpam 2004 catches 70% of the spam I get.

It does not crash my machine, as some others have accounted, but it regularly is running at nearly 90% utilization making other programs run slowly, too. The more spam I get the slower and slower it seems to get.

I am afraid of what it will be like given another month - I have only been running it one month.

I was very disappointed, and when I wrote their tech support - no answer, unless I was interested in paying for the support. That's the problem with large companys who hide their contact info. I figured I had already paid too much.

Just in case you were wondering if my machine is junk, I am running on a 2Ghz w/1GB RAM. So, no excuse - shame on you Norton.

One final problem, and what motivated me to write their tech support (again, to no avail) is that the proxy that AntiSpam 2004 seems to employ makes Microsoft Front Page and Microsoft InterDev and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET no longer authenticate successfully. I have to disable AntiSpam (and reboot) before I can use either of those tools.

Problems problems problems, and the outlook is bleak.

Two words for you Symantec: Quality Assurance.

Two other words, also: Customer Service

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Crashes Outlook Express 6.0
Review: I installed this product on a new PC running XP and Outlook Express 6.0. The product works great except for the 'This is spam' and 'This is not spam'functions. When ever I use them, Express crashes with no error and I have to reboot the machine to get it back up. The (I use this term very loosely) support web site acknowledges the problem but says it only happens occasionally. On my system, it happens every time. They have no solution for the problem. I also do not think I should have to pay for support that will cost me as much as the software did itself. I think the testing department blew it on this one. Oh well, that is what I get for buying version 1.0. I would suggest that others wait for version 1.1 or 2.0, especially if they are using Outlook Express.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Runs and Works Great for about 1 week
Review: Works great if you can get it to run more that 1 week. After about a week the tool bar disappears from Outlook 2002, and the install program does not allow you to reinstall for repair, you have to uninstall - reboot - then reinstall again. Serves me right for buying a rev 1.0 of a program. I have reloaded this program about 5 times. Nothing about this problem on Symantec's site, and I am not going to pay 30 bucks phone support on a program I already paid 40 bucks for.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: spam not removed
Review: I had 3 cans of spam in my pantry. I installed this software in my dresser & the cans are still there. Enough said.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works for me
Review: I have been using this product for about six months now and have had great results. It works well with Outlook Express. It doesn't catch everything, but it does catch many spam messages and filter them into a spam folder. My only complaint is that it only works with my pop account, not with my Hotmail account that I read in Outlook Express.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do bother - More trouble than help from Symantec
Review: This product does not work with MS Outlook 2002. It crashed the email program every time when it was first opened right after having "Fast User Switched" in WinXP Pro. Not worth the pain of dealing with email tech support either!

I won't buy any Symantec products ever again! I am ditching them after this. Their products have gotten worse every year!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Installation nightmare
Review: I installed NAS with windows XP and it would not work.
After several e-mails and phone calls to their support desk in India they had me delete all my Norton programs (pc anywhere and Norton Antivirus) and run some patches and delete files and delete items in regedit.
Now I get a 3 different errors when I start my computer, I can't do microsoft windows updates and Antivirus and antispam do not work. The support is very slow to respond and don't seem to know what they are doing.
I will probably have to reformat my machine and start again

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A waste of money, time and energy; crazy-making
Review: Worked fine initially. Then it deteriorated. Took forever to enter a posting into Norton Antispam (to designate it as spam). Then inexplicably my e-mail on Outlook Express 6 got very buggy. Finally, I started getting duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates of the same spam with minor variations, endlessly; and Norton Antispam began preceding the sender information in every incoming e-mail, including my professional listserv e-mails, with "[Norton Antispam]" (as shown here, in brackets). This resulted in my needing to delete the "[Norton Antispam"] when I replied to an e-mail posting. At one point I noticed that my listserv postings (professional group communications) had very sharply diminished in number. Ultimately, I found that Norton Antispam had-- apparently for my convenience-- segregated these into the Norton Antispam folder. There I found some 2,000 e-mails, all with "[Norton Antispam"] preceding the senders' addresses. Many of these were my professional listserv messages; others were the usual obnoxious scams and spams for which one purchases antispam software; however, when I tried to click on the button that tells Norton Antispam that "this is spam," I found it to be greyed out, and NONE OF THE MESSAGES COULD NOW BE DESIGNATED AS SPAM, apparently because they now had been funneled to me THROUGH Norton Antispam, like a gift. (I was, however, given the option to click on the button to indicate that "this is NOT spam.")

The wrestling with bugs in my system went on for hours and days, beginning with my internet service provider, going to Microsoft (where, for a fee, they helped somewhat), and continuing with Norton. Norton's customer support was execrable. On the final day of my efforts to get help, at one point I was on the phone for more than an hour, on hold. Support staff seemed befuddled, clueless, and ready to repeat what another support person had done that was useless, despite my protests. I was prepared to pay the nearly $30 they asked for their "help," but balked when the last technician was ready to charge me an additional nearly $70 because, supposedly, a virus had gotten into my e-mail. I wasn't convinced; very recently Norton Antivirus had scanned my computer and found no viruses. I had to ask to speak to a supervisor because she refused to take "no" for an answer to this billing. Norton's other products have so far worked well for me, incidentally.

Finally, I disabled the Norton Antispam and deleted all messages with the "[Norton Antispam]" imprimatur. This has apparently solved problems for now, and I just "block sender" on the spam.


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