Rating: 
Summary: A detailed personal firewall
Review: I just had a few miscellaneous comments to make.Norton Personal Firewall is one of the three main packages out there offering this capability, along with Fail-Safe Technologies ZoneAlarm Pro 2, and McAfee's own McAfee Firewall software. These products work by monitoring all TCP/IP and IP Port activity on your system, and by acting (hopefully intelligently) on such activity when it occurs to keep the bad guys out of your system. I run this under Windows XP, and so far it's worked quite smoothly. The program is more complex and is more difficult to configure if you want to customize the settings than ZoneAlarm Pro 2, but that's to be expected given all the extra options. Since I use this for a home PC, I may not need all the extra filtering and customizing capabilties that this offers, but it's okay. You have it if you want it. I switched over to this program when I had some conflicts with ZoneAlarm Pro 2, although I like the simpler, more intuitive interface of it better than Norton. The conflicts may have been with Netsonic's Netboost caching program, rather than with Norton Anti-Virus, and I still need to do a better job of troubleshooting to nail that down. If I can resolve the conflicts, I might switch back to ZoneAlarm Pro 2, for one reason. I can't seem to figure out how to configure Norton so that it pops up an alert whenever a program trys to access the net, so that at that point you can decide whether or not you want to permit it. You can set up logging so that it monitors everything, and you can even set up customized rules that are fairly detailed, but not this. I figure there has to be a way, but what with the extra complexity of the program I just haven't seen it yet, but I've looked at all the screens. One thing Norton does implement better than ZoneAlarm Pro 2 is what it calls "Intrusion Detection." This pops up an alert when port-scanning is detected. ZoneAlarm Pro 2 does this simply by alerting you to every inbound attempt to communicate with your system, so it's really no different, but if it works right, you'll be informed of actual port scans whereas ZoneAlarm Pro 2 may not tell you that's what happening, it'll just say there was an unauthorized attempt to communicate with your system. Obviously, there is a trade-off here between a program's ease of use and how much the developer wants to communicate to the user (who may not be that technically literate) all the details of what the firewall is seeing that's going on "under the hood." Since I was a professional NT system administrator for many years, I'd like to know about it just for general curiosity's sake, although it's probably not that important for most people. I can't comment on Norton's product versus McAfee's, since I haven't used it myself, but I'd be interested in knowing how it compares with the McAfee offering. Anyway, so far Norton's Personal Firewall has worked quite well and I'm very satisfied with it. I'll be extremely satisfied with it if I can just figure out how to do that one thing I mentioned.
Rating: 
Summary: Cable users beware
Review: I just purchased norton Internet security 2002 and found it much more user friendly than my older version. However, at times my user resources get incredibly low - such that my PC clock even stops keeping time. Norton says "they are working on this". My most important recommendation is that you always disable Norton when downloading new software to your PC!!!!!!! Don't let Norton be incharge of what you want installed and what you don't. We found this out the hard way when installing our new software for our cable internet service. This caused slow slow slow service and it was like our mouse had terrets!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Product for Windows XP!
Review: I purchased Norton Firewall 2002 along with Norton Systemworks 2002 (see separate review). I recently upgraded to Windows XP, so I needed utility software that was compatible with the new OS. So far, I am COMPLETELY satisfied. I recommend that a person use Norton Firewall rather than the default firewall in Windows XP, for it gives far greater protection. Contrary to other persons posting here, I have had no problems running Norton Systemworks and Norton Firewall together. I used Norton Firewall 2001, so I appreciate the same user-friendly interface. One very important point is to make sure the Windows XP default firewall is disabled BEFORE installing Norton Personal Firewall 2002. I'm not sure what would happen if both firewalls were running, but it is likely to cause problems. The help section of Windows XP will walk you through the process. The only caution I would offer is that if you have Norton Firewall 2001 and are NOT planning to upgrade to Windows XP in the near future, DON'T buy this product. Norton Firewall 2002 and Norton Systemworks 2002 have few changes from the 2001 versions. The MAIN change is the compatibility of both programs with Windows XP. There are lots of satisfied Norton customers out there. Norton is also STILL a leading name in utility software. If you are upgrading to Windows XP and have been happy with Norton in the past, I feel confident you won't be disappointed with this latest release.
Rating:
Summary: Robert B. Kincaid
Review: I recently purchased Norton Firewall 2002 and am very pleased with its performance. I thought it may be a little difficult to set up, but actually it is very simple. There are "recommended" settings which prevent the unnecessary pop ups and still provide complete protection. I have dial-up and I still purchased it because I wanted to feel safe when online. I now own 3 Norton products and all have done well.
Rating:
Summary: A great product and its easy to use.
Review: I replaced my old free downloaded firewall program with Norton Personal Firewall 2002 and am very happy that I did. I run it with Windows XP and have not had any problems. It was very easy to set up and runs quitely only alerting me when there are major threats to my computer which it has blocked. It sure gives me peace of mind. I am extremely happy with this program and recomend it to anyone who uses the internet.
Rating:
Summary: Safety comes on a single disk.
Review: I was very pleased with the ease of the installation. It was so easy I wasn't sure if it was working. You can easily look at the status as well as the past statistics of your system's security with just a click of the mouse. Every day since installing the software it has stopped several attack attempts. I was especially happy to have this installed when I went with cable modem service! I was concened that this would use a lot of system resources, but that hasn't been a problem for me at all! Everything runs like a top! I HIGHLY recommend this software!
Rating: 
Summary: Awful!
Review: I would just like to comment very briefly on this product, that all seemed to be doing well and it did manage to work very well for a number of weeks. However it completly prevented me from viewing any websites under a 'secure server' Its caused me many wasted days with little access to the net. Money down the drain for this product, avoid!
Rating: 
Summary: norton personal firewall 2001 was a lot better.
Review: If you're just a plain home user who do not want to bother customizing your personal firewall's policy, this is the firewall for you. On the other hand, if you would rather have a mix of a smart firewall that also gives you the flexibility of fine tuning rules to your needs.... open certain ports (tcp or udp), let certain applications access the internet,... this software can be a bit confusing. Though the 2002 version lets you do it, it takes a lot more extra steps for one to customize the packet filtering which is a total pain. The 2001 version is a lot more flexible and geared towards the more "savvy" user. This is one of the few products that pretty much isn't worth an upgrade if you have an earlier version. On the plus side, functionality is great, it provides good protection and a simple interface.
Rating:
Summary: More annoying than the threat of being hacked
Review: It's easy to install and set up, but it's impossible to configure to the way you want it to work. At first I set it for maximum security and quickly realized it was annoying me with messages and alerts on every page I clicked on. On every single java applet or active x control it would prompt me for an ok. Even if I said ok it would usually block it anyway or it wouldn't work properly after Norton got done with it. So I decided to go the other route and allow pretty much everything to work by default. Norton would STILL mess everything up. My own personal home page has some shockwave menu buttons, Norton blocks them so they no longer work. On this site, norton blocks pretty much all little graphics such as my 1 star rating and the menu tabs at the top of the page. Basically I wanted a program that would keep my information private and let me know if people were attempting to hack into my system. If it blocked ads and popup windows - that'd be a nice bonus. It does provide a cool little alert tool in the shape of a half-globe that alerts you when suspected attackers are trying to access your system. In my case it was mostly script kiddies trying to enable subseven. As far as releasing personal information though, who knows? I've caught Norton numerous times allowing various programs to access the internet without my permission (for example, annoying programs like Windows Media go to the msn site upon launch without my permission or others will check for updates to their software). If Norton allows that, what else is it going to allow - personal information and backdoor trojans it doesn't yet know about sounds like a logical conclusion. Most annoying, though is the so-called ad blocking. It doesn't work - plain and simple. Even annoying popup windows continue to pop up. It does, however, block graphics you do want to see. The whole purpose of graphics blocking was to enable web pages to load faster. These settings already can be controlled by Netscape or IE so why Norton does this is beyond me. Plus, with Norton Firewall enabled it takes so long to load a web page it defeats the whole purpose of graphics blocking in the first place. The Norton Knowledgebase was no help and it became ridiculous trying to get an answer from someone with a pulse or a brain. I found myself disabling the program constantly just to get web pages to load properly. This kind of defeates the whole purpose, doesn't it? I'm going to check out the latest release of ZoneAlarm. If I don't like it, I'm going back to Black Ice. In the case of this program, let's see if the uninstaller works like it's supposed to.
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointments
Review: Norton Firewall 2003 failed to install correctly on my Windows XP Pro machine with 512MB of memory! Every time I tried I got a blue screen with "Dumping physical memory", despite following the installation procedures to the letter. When I finally managed to install the program, it blocked a large number of websites, including symantec's own! And yes, I allowed pretty much everything on the setup screen. I finally gave up after three days, wrote the investment off and downloaded Black Ice. Installed correctly the first time, has been running with no problems whatsoever and has caught 20+ hackers in the past 24 hours. I am sure my experience with Norton Firewall is down to my failing somehow but I do not have the time and the patience to "investigate".
| 
