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Norton Internet Security 2004

Norton Internet Security 2004

List Price: $69.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Avoid like the plague.
Review: I already knew something was wrong, because much of the Spam I've seen in the past six months was from resellers of Norton products. For Norton to encourage Spammers by letting them sell their products is a very bad sign.

But I have been using Norton Antivirus for several years, and McAfee's online ratings aren't much better, so -- I purchased this product online. There was a lot of confusion and I ended up with a sales basket that included the product I wanted (Norton Internet Security Professional) and also the standard (non-Pro) version I didn't want. The website also had added automatically, without asking me, the "download warranty" that lets you download again for up to one year ($6.99) for both products. I zeroed out the quantities for the three things I didn't want and went to the next page, where I expected to see only what I wanted, and a chance to confirm it before making the sale final. But no, I was charged for all four products, including the two that aren't products at all.

The run-around they put me through to request a refund was MONUMENTAL, and apparently the download warranties CAN'T be refunded. I will complain to the credit card company and get my refunds, but all this run-around is another bad sign. Is Norton in some kind of melt-down, that they have to treat customers this way? If so, what about all that support they're promising, if they go down?

Next issue: within a few minutes of installing the software, Norton blocked and reported an attempted access from the Internet, called "Default Block NetBus Trojan Horse". Great, that's what I was hoping to prevent. BUT: what was that all about? How do I know who was doing it and who do I tell, in order to get somebody put in jail? And was it real, or did Norton make it up to justify the money I spent? Based on the other issues mentioned above, I can't really trust them.

My advice: avoid Norton like the plague.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Its a hog.
Review: Let me start by admitting that I don't have a top of the line computer (1 GHz Duron with 256 MB of RAM) but it was certainly fast enough for me until I installed Norton Internet Security.

I'll give it two stars because the virus scan works pretty good. I primarily bought the product because I was interested in the Parental Controls (web site filtering). It works but it made me feel like 15 years ago when I was on a 486 with a dial up modem. Looking at Task Manager in XP I saw that the internet filtering application had sucked up 86 MB of RAM and a good percentage of the CPU time. Maybe if you have a 2-3 GHz machine and 512 MB of RAM it would run better.

My solution was to disable everything and do a manual virus scan once in a while. For content filering I got the Linksys WRT54GS router and signed up for the Parental Control subscription. So far I am happy with the Linksys router (my computer is back up to speed and no porn). After some time with it I'll put in a review for it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: BUYER BEWARE-Amazon is crooked
Review: I bought this product from Amazon, it was a copy of an original and quit working. I called Symantec and they told me it was a fake. I'm in the process of trying to get a refund or chargeback. Don't buy from Amazon

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Avoid
Review: Overpriced and underpowered..... This software is more annoying then anything else. You practically have to turn off every setting to get your networked printers and network games to work, for example.
(...)

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A poorly designed product
Review: It took me a day to install this product. If you do choose to use this product be sure to uninstall all other norton virus and internet security products even tho the instructions say that norton 2003 is uninstalled automatically--it isin't!! My computer now crashes frequently since I began using this product. My advice is to stay clear of this product until they get it fixed. One other point--don't count on getting any technical help form Symantec--they don't even have decent free help installing the product let alone using it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Another buggy Symantec release!
Review: I've been a loyal Norton software user since 1990 and have recommended it to many. No longer. The last few years of "upgrades", while adding dubious benefits, have been progressively harder to install and run. In 2002 & 2003, well-publicized product key renewal glitches sent customers running to the competition. Now it appears to be a variety of issues, not the least of which in my case is an inability to access email via Outlook or Outlook Express when there are multiple Windows users on a single PC.

This appears to be an AntiSpam problem based on other reviews, although 20+ emails exchanged with their free email "technical support" have not pointed in that direction. I have gone full-circle with their email support twice now, always coming back to the same solutions I have tried unsuccessfully. After loading the various programs into memory one at a time (I have both NIS and NSW 2004 installed), the one which seems to consistently cause email problems is AntiSpam.

One would think that a software company that specializes in utility tools that find and fix PC problems would not release a product that creates as many or more problems than it fixes. While far from an expert, I am more technically capable than the average PC user. I would hate to think of the problems the average or below-average user could experience by loading this product that is supposed to be providing protection. Symantec has apparently decided to sacrifice quality for quantity - in the end they will sacrifice both. Great utilities, when they work, but far, far to much effort is required to make them work properly.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Effective, but VERY bulky
Review: While it has a rather effective firewall, and comes with Norton Antivirus (which I'm actually rather fond of), the Security Suite has significantly slowed down my system. I'm currently using a Sony Vaio S-150 (which I bought at the end of this past August), and it takes about five minutes just to boot the system - in fact, I've taken to just hibernating, rather than shutting down completely.
The Antivirus is good, but "Internet Security" just isn't worth it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Voted With My Feet
Review: After months of frustration with NIS 2004 and Symantec's pitiful tech. support, I finally threw in the towel. Went with PC-cillin Internet Security 2005 and am happy that I did so. The PC-cillin UI isn't as refined as NIS's but - you know! - the product works, the Anti-spam component integrates nicely with Outlook, and etc... No compatibility issues and my machine is running noticably quicker.

With any luck, I'll never have to be concerned with the quality of TrendMicro's tech. support. In any event, it couldn't possibly be worse than Symantec's. Here's Symantec's version of how to fix the Visual C++ Runtime Error for the AntiSpam plugin, so well documented in other customer reviews and on the Web:
1) Rename MSOUPLUG.DLL to MSOUPLUG.OLD. Trouble is, that's not a fix; it simply prevents the error message by disabling the very plug-in you were trying to fix.
2) Do a LiveUpdate for NIS 2005. Trouble is, I was running NIS 2004.
3) Remove and reinstall NIS 2004. A painful procedure that, in the end, doesn't work (and they know it).
4) Upgrade to NIS 2005. (Yeah! Right!)

Um... NIS 2004 a bad product. Very bad. Read the reviews here before you buy; we can't ALL be lying...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Killed my Internet Access Speed
Review: Loaded this suite on a newly built PC: AMD Athlon64 512Mb RAM, WinXP Home, running broadband cable - connection speeds were slower than my dialup while I had the program loaded. Uninstalled and PC ran like a champ... excepting the junk Symantec left on my PC... Couldn't fully uninstall since it had hooked nearly every program I had installed. Ended up having to reload Windows to get the machine to run without error and at optimum speed.

Would NOT recommend this program. It was a waste of my time and money.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: NIS 2004 - Total Garbage
Review: Without repeating all the problems reported by other reviewers (I have experienced most of them and more) suffice it to say that amazon should take this off of their shelf and refuse to sell it. It is utter and complete garbage - I have never seen any software that behaves so poorly or is so poorly supported. Symantec / Norton should be ashamed of this product and should send a refund to all users of it.


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