Norton Internet Security 2002

Rating:
Summary: Runs perfectly on my Windows XP system.
Review: I installed Norton Internet Security 2002 on my Windows XP system recently, and it runs very smoothly. I read previous reviews on this program, so I knew I needed to follow the packaged instructions exactly. Be sure and prepare your computer before you install NIS 2002. Disable the Windows XP Firewall, and remove any anti-virus programs you have running before installation. It's also a good idea to create the emergency rescue disks. These are very easy to make, and the included instructions will guide you through this process. Overall, I am very pleased with this program, so I have given it a five-star rating.

Rating:
Summary: If You Use Cable Or DSL To Go Online, You Need This...
Review: I recently installed Norton Internet Security in my Windows XP system after the previous anti-virus software which came with the computer failed to prevent an attack by the blaster worm virus which came through my DSL line.

The hard drive crashed and it had to be reformatted, and after I reinstalled Windows XP, and my DSL service, I installed Norton Internet Security, and the installation was a dream. I inserted the disc in my CD drive, and the programs installed itself with ease, requiring only a few clicks on the dialog boxes.

Norton Anti-Virus is on another computer I have (a Windows 98), and it's so easy to update the program to keep up with the latest computer viruses and worms with Auto-Update. With Norton Internet Security, you can set Auto-Update to become active automatically when new updates are available, and the updates won't interfere with your work while you're online.

If you use DSL or cable to go online, you've got to have Norton Internet Security installed on your computer, because your DSL/cable service provider's firewall may not be secure enough to prevent hacker attacks, and Norton Personal Firewall adds an extra layer of security to keep your computer safe.

Norton Personal Firewall, which is included in the Internet Security program, was able to stop three hacker attacks within a hour after I'd reinstalled my DSL service, which I think is very impressive.

Along with an easy to use Parental Control program, spam blocker and Intrusion Detection to alert you to hacker attacks before they get to your computer, Norton Internet Security is a must-have program if you use DSL or cable to go online, or even if you use dial-up to go online, get Norton Internet Security. It's definitely worth the money!

Rating:
Summary: Better than average product. Non-existant support.
Review: Symantec's Norton Internet Security combines a firewall, anti-virus and ad blocking in a nice package. The LiveUpdate feature makes updates easy. However, Symantec will give you LITTLE to NO support even if you find a bug with their product. Good luck contacting them because they have hidden their phone numbers on their website to force you to solve problems yourself. The problem is that some problems are not solvable by anyone other than Symantec. For example, they have a bug that basically breaks ad blocking. Ad blocking does not work. I paid for this functionality and it is completely broken. They gave no way of reporting the problem and left us customers in the dust. There are other problems too that happen from time to time. The anti-virus software sometimes can't scan your e-mail. So, you won't be able to read your e-mail until they fix their software OR you take the risk of disabling antivirus and getting a potential e-mail virus. I urge everyone who owns this product to complain to Symantec about their complete lack of support. It's one thing if they want to filter out common user problems that waste their tech support staff's time but it's another issue entirely to leave your customers with no recourse.

Rating:
Summary: The best internet security money will buy!
Review: I did a lot of research on various virus software products and read a lot of reviews before deciding on this one. If you want to try before you buy, go to www.symantec.com and download this product as 30-day trialware from the Symantec website. You won't be dissappointed. Also, I had to go around the world to find the answer to the question as to whether the product included a paperback instruction manual. Amazon does include a manual. But, in the course of this investigation, I also found out that some software companies, including Symantec sell to discount or outlet stores, such as WalMart, BestBuy, Sam's ect., a "scaled down version" which only provides help menus on CD in the form of PDF "readme files", and the price may or may not reflect a full boxed version. This may not be an important fringe benefit to some, but if I'm paying for it anyway, why not get it! The product is worth every dime. After a few days of installation, the software alerted me that I had 4 attempts at privacy intrusion and 2 hacker attempts. Also, you can screen out all those annoying banners and advertisments that bombard you everytime you visit a webite. Don't waste your money on less expensive software titles. You get what you pay for! Why not get the best!

Rating:
Summary: Good concept, MANY pitfalls...
Review: I have always loved Norton software. I've used Norton AntiVirus for the past few years, upgrading yearly. I purchased Norton Utilities and Norton CleanSweep, also finding them quite easy to use and very helpful. However, Norton Internet Security 2002 (NIS) has caused me quite a few problems. For reference, I have a Pentium III (650 mHz) laptop with 192 MB RAM running Windows XP, and I use a high-speed internet connection.

First, the good news. NIS's firewall is easy to use and works well. There are plenty of customizable features, good protection against intruders, and awesome cookie-blocking. The Ad Blocking feature is wonderful, though it has issues, as I will soon explain. Norton AntiVirus 2002 (NAV) is, as any Norton user knows, a great antivirus program, and it integrates perfectly into NIS. If NIS could manage to keep all of these components working, this would be one fantastic suite of software.

As other reviewers have noted, NIS has some bugs that Symantec has yet to fix. There is nothing more annoying than having a problem, visiting Symantec's Tech Support website, and finding a lovely "We have no solution to this problem at this time" message. Very polite, Symantec, but not helpful at all. One bug in particular that's causing me some problems involves the Ad Blocking feature. It suddenly does not work anymore... Apparently this has something to do with an update I downloaded with LiveUpdate. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't updates supposed to *improve* one's software? Hmm.

Another bug involves Norton AntiVirus (NAV). Sometimes, AutoProtect will not be enabled when I start up Windows. If I right-click the tray icon and select "Enable AutoProtect," nothing happens. If I attempt to enable AutoProtect using the NAV menu in NIS, I get a wonderfully useless "Internet Script Error" message. The same thing happens if I try to enable AutoProtect using either the NAV menu in NAV itself or the Options menu for NAV. I found a fix at Symantec's site, but really... What a pain.

Now, for the really messy stuff. The following complaint only applies to Windows XP, as I never had this problem before I upgraded my laptop's OS from Win 98 SE to Win XP. I'm rather good with computers, but know this: Don't even try to uninstall Norton software unless you're a pro. It took me about four hours to uninstall and reinstall NIS after it decided I wasn't allowed to install NAV. Apparently even though I uninstalled NAV using the uninstall tool of Windows, traces of NAV remained. Therefore, whenever I tried to install NIS, it informed me NAV was already installed, even though I had "uninstalled" it. So, I tried using the "Remove NAV" option on the NIS CD after installing NIS without NAV. This didn't work. I uninstalled NIS completely, tried to reinstall it again, and, *surprise*, NAV was supposedly still installed after I supposedly removed it TWICE. At this point, I debated chucking my laptop out the window.

I went to the Tech Support website, desperate for a solution. The only solution I found was to use RNIS.exe and RNAV.exe, two removal utilities available for download at Symantec's site, to remove NIS and NAV from my system "completely." Interestingly, Symantec doesn't provide tech support for people using RNIS.exe and RNAV.exe to remove their products. After using these utilities to remove NIS and NAV, there were *still* traces of these programs on my system. I had to run regedt32.exe (Windows' registry editor) and manually delete all registry keys for NIS and NAV. This took *forever*, and, somehow or another, deleting the registry keys for NIS and NAV messed up my other Norton software programs, Norton Utilities (NU) and Norton CleanSweep (NCS). How fun.

Boiling with rage, I uninstalled NU and NCS, then searched my registry for every single Norton registry entry by searching for the words "Norton," "NAV," "internet security," etc. I also found keys for Norton Personal Firewall (NPF) in my registry, which is interesting since I "uninstalled" NPF before I upgraded to XP. So, now my system was *completely* purged of all references to Norton. Finally, I was able to install NIS, with NAV, completely and without problems. Then, I reinstalled NU and NCS. After hours of work, my computer once again had its once-beloved Norton programs! The big question is, was all of this toil worth it? If the problems I mentioned before I began detailing my uninstall horror did not exist, yes. However, NIS has issues with NAV AutoProtect and Ad Blocking, so I feel cheated.

Everything except Ad Blocking works right now, so I'm fairly content. I'm just glad I have virus protection once again, although I'm angry it took so long to get the stupid thing running! For the everyday Joe who doesn't know much about the inner workings of computers, this product gets one star. You're stuck if you start having problems... Unless you want to give your first-born child to the tech support people, who demand millions of dollars in ransom for solutions to problems their software causes! Thankfully, I've never called that hotline, aware of the garbage involved. For more advanced computer users, I give this product three stars. If you can get past all of this nonsense and get the software to work, the features are great.

To amazon.com customers, I say, "Purchase at your own risk." To Symantec, I say, "Shame on you for lousing up such a great product. If software isn't fully compatible with Win XP (and yes, that includes uninstallation!), don't claim it's compatible!" Sigh. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended for Windows 98 users
Review: Norton Internet Security is an essential set of programs IF you 1.) have a PC w/internet connection, and 2.) are using Windows 98 3.) and cannot afford a hardware firewall. This review for all intents and purposes is based on compatibility with a Win 98 system. If you are using a different operating system, I recommend reading review from people using the same OS.

So why do I so highly recommed Norton Internet Security 2002 that I would give it 5 stars? I have NOT experienced any problems with stabilty and it is quite useful. It has 2 very important features for us internet users including VIRUS PROTECTION that is easy to update and Symantic is good about updating definitions nearly on a daily basis, and a FIREWALL that is highly configurable, and compatible with home networks. Yes this means you probably need to read the manual (which is on the CD by the way), but a little reading never hurt anybody (you might fall asleep though ;-)

New to the 2002 suite is the capability to scan your computer for programs that access the internet, and you can auto configure or manualy. The cookie blocking feature is not neccessary for internet explorer 6 users because of the new privacy feature, but with Norton IS 2002, you can also configure the firewall to ask if you want to block Ative X controls and Java aplets, and it also blocks script. For example: if you had windows scriping host installed and a trojan on your computer that gave the intruder the ability to automate tasks on your computer through window scripting host, it would be a problem without script blocking. It is possible to uninstall windows scripting host though. Did I mention that integrated with the firewall is the ability to track a cracker, giving you information about the intruder? While it is not perfect, you might learn a thing or two about where attacks are coming from. Admittedly this feature is not nearly as simple or informative as Black Ice Defender, but it does get the job done. If you really want to know who the haxors are (unless they are "spoofing" the IP), then use BlackIce with Norton Internet Security. I have done this and it is possible. There is also an ad blocking feature which is also not perfect, but it does filter SOME of the garbage so that THOSE pages can load quicker. About the only thing missing from this suite is a program to detect "spyware", but this is easily solved by going to Zdnet.com and downloading "Ad-aware" which is freeware and works great.

The Bottom Line is this: Norton Internet Security is stable, useful, updatable, and I Higly Recommend it. Every internet user should have VIRUS PROTECTION and a FIRWALL (hardware if you can afford it). One last bit of advice, antivirus programs are not up to date out of the box. So you should update the virus definitions at least once a week.

Rating:
Summary: AtGuard in Crippleware form
Review: Once upon a time, a little company had a product called AtGuard that would:
1) Monitor your connection for hack attacks and other surreptitious communications,
2) Allow you to explicitly determine which programs could contact the 'net (outbound, inbound or both),
3) Allow you to block or accept cookies from particular sites,and
4) Block almost any banner or popup ad

All of these items could be configured in a 'learning mode' which prevented long hours of configuration. Every time a new communication/cookie was attempted, you would be able to block it on a one-time or permanent basis.

The company that published AtGuard went on to other things but many of the features (and much of the source code from the look of the interface) was purchased by Symantec/Norton and made part of their Internet Security package.

Unfortunately, in their typical attempt to make the software usable for all, Symantec has made the software usable for none, thanks to the big-button syndrome.

Configuration items that were a single mouse click away in AtGuard (or accessible via a 'dashboard') are now buried in layers of dialog boxes and 'advanced' options. Since when is blocking ad strings an advanced option?

Let's face it - the cookie controls in modern browsers are still pretty lousy and mysteriously there are few, if any, ad-blocking tools. Of course, any company doing business on the web has zero incentive to block ads, since it might be one of their own.

AdSubtract is probably a better choice but I find it delays page loads.

If you want to monitor/control traffic, use BlackIce or ZoneAlarm.

Fine print from the warranty: "Symantec does not warrant that the software will meet your requirements or that operation of the software will be uninterrupted or that the software will be error-free."

Thank you Symantec - couldn't have said it better myself.

Rating:
Summary: Protect your system...
Review: Yes, this program may slow down your computer slightly, but that's normal for many anti-virus/firewalls programs. The slight slowdown is worth the protection. And it is noticable, since it runs on my slow computer (Pentium 233MHZ, 64MB RAM), it's had a few probs running, but nothing that severe. It's saved my computer from several types of disasters though. And yes, there is a yearly payment for the virus update subscription, but it's all worth it. There are always new trojans and nasty things out there on the web to get ya, but updating regularly will keep you system safe. Nothing has got passed Norton yet, so I am completely satisfied with it.

Rating:
Summary: Can be hard to lasso down
Review: While I feel secure with this product and am thoroughly satisfied with the antivirus software, it has the annoying tendency to ignore the user's orders. Specifically, the software allows you to allow, deny, or automatically configure other programs on your computer which try to access the Internet. But after you provide a setting, weeks later it will ask you again whether to allow, deny, etc. as if the program is totally new and had no idea what settings you had put in previously. In the long run this becomes tedious and annoying. However, friends have had the same trouble with McAfee...

Rating:
Summary: Buy NIS 2003 For the Ad Blocking Feature Alone
Review: This is a good product, but the 2003 line is better. Norton
Internet Security 2003 contains an OUTSTANDING ad blocking
feature. After installation, I visited numerous sites which had
previously dumped loads of pop-up and pop-under ad windows and
flash-based ads on my screen, but now -- POOF -- no more trash,
with no discernable negative effects on web page loading. Plus
ad banners are effectively eliminated--so all you get is the web
page you want. After a week of intensive use, I have yet to find
a problem with this software. I find it difficult to praise
this product enough--it delivers every feature smoothly and
efficiently, as advertised. I have it installed on my computer
along with Norton Cleansweep--no conflicts or flaws noted.