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Norton Antivirus 2004

Norton Antivirus 2004

List Price: $49.95
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Out There; I've Put It On a Dozen computers
Review: I have sort of evolved into the computer techie for my extended family and therefore am responsible for the digital health of about a dozen computers and a couple dozen people. That is quite a responsibility. Since many computers come equipped with McAfee and various other antivirus programs. Some did not heed my advice and they went and downloaded the freeware antivirus utilities. This may be coincidence, but without fail every single one of those individuals (about 5 or 6 computers in all) ended up being knocked out of commission by viruses. On the computers that have had Norton on them, since 1999, I have not had one instance of a virus.

I know that this experience isn't everybody's, and I know that no program can stop all viruses all the time, but so far Norton has a perfect record for me, so I will keep using it. Now that they have developed the Bloodhound feature to protect against new and unknown viruses, I'm assuming that it will be even better.

My one warning is that right out of the box, Live Update is not activated. I don't know why this is as many of my family who have installed it themselves do not manually activate it (since they didn't know they had to) and therefore operate with really old virus definitions until I go into the settings and turn LiveUpdate on.

I have not hesitate to recommended Norton for every computer that my extended family has purchased. The never-ending rebates which often reduce the price of the software to almost nothing are great too. My recommendation is obvious: Norton is the best out there.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: This product was extremely worthless since it doesn't load on my computer even though I meet all the stated requirements and am running windows XP. Look elsewhere for your protection.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good product, installed without problems
Review: I have recently bought this product; just to update my previous version that came pre-installed on my laptop. Contrary to some other user experiences, I did not face any problem in installing, activating or registering it. My computer has remained virus free during the trial period of previous version and I hope to continue to keep my data protected from viruses by using this software.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Subscription hassles
Review: I just tried to renew my subscription to Norton Antivirus 2003... what a major ordeal. They send you a subscription key code with a huge document on how to correctly type it in. Doesn't go thru at all. I worked their tech support several times to no avail. Very frustrating. I ended up eating the cost of 1 year subscription and bought McAfee instead. Much better.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Warning: subscription renewal flawed
Review: My 2002 version of this program recently told me my subscription for virus definition updates needed to be renewed. So after paying online for the renewal (which has worked twice before), I was given a key number that doesn't work. I tried to find tech support for this issue online but it turns out Symantec doesn't support the 2002 version (er, except for charging me for an unusable subscription renewal). And trying to get through to their billing section produces "all circuits are busy" message. So I guess I'll have to try disputing my credit card charge to see if I can get my renewal fee back from Symantec.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Can't work; won't work
Review: As a product, Norton Antivirus makes a great coffee table coaster because that's all it's good for. NAV let a virus eat my laptop. To Norton's credit, the remedy instructions were clear, concise and easy to follow; unfortunately, they just didn't work. Several months of work lost and untold cost was the price. I religiously kept it up to date, scanned every night, scanned all email and attachments and Norton still failed. If you live and work through the internet like I do, put this product back on the shelf and reach for the red box.
Thanks for nothing Norton!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Thier "Award Winning Customer Support" is very bad
Review: I bought the retail version of NAV 2004. About a couple of months since I installed and register the product, I started having a lot of problems with the software. It kept on disabling and finally deactivated itself. I re-installed the software a few times which worked fine for a couple days at a time. I called the customer support but could never get through to anyone as they place you on eternal hold. I held on as long as 45 minutes on a couple of occasions. I e-mailed thier tech. support dept and they replied telling me to call the 800 number. I e-mailed back tell them how I can't get through on the number and thier reply was to fill out the customer feedback form. Frustrated, I removed the NAV 2004 and Firewall and purchased the McAfee security suite instead. I think the product is good when it works but I have to give it a low mark for the terrible customer support. I also never like the fact that they require that you renew the subscritpion evey year for a fee to continue the use of the product.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Good Anti Virus - Poor Support and Activation Nightmares
Review: I've been using Norton AntiVirus for 5+ years. It's been a decent product and keep my computer relatively virus free. For this I say thanks. But, this year I upgraded to Norton AntiVirus 2004 Professional. From day one I had problems installing and activating it. Finally, after hours of troubleshooting, holding on the phone, and re-installing I got the product working. Not that the support professionals at Symantec could help. They finally told me that they could not find the solution and that they would issue me a refund. I basicallqy rebuilt my system and got it running. I wish I had taken the refund!!!

It worked fine for several months. Just last week I bought a new DVD Writer to back-up my data. Installed it with ease. Upon reboot, Norton AV informs me that my product has not been activated and that my trial has expired. The nightmare returns. I re-install, re-activate, and call for help. I spent a total of 6 hours troubleshooting it again. 3 hours on hold for the three departments(Online Store, Tech Support, and Activation Support). Finally, a rep siad they'd send me a CD because the downlaod version couldn't be activated by phone, the only alternative when the product wont activate. Got the CD, spent another hour on hold and finally got it activated.

Software has issues and sometimes we need support, but when a company decides to put an activation requirement on thier software but can't support it, it's a shame. Some might say they supported it but I'd rather have my time and money back and use a product that isn't so aggrevating. I wouldn't recommend this product for those that are not technically inclined, extremely patient, and/or willing to lose the investment when Symantec is practically unable to re-activate their own product. I will not be upgrading to Symantecs future AV products and would advise others to do the same.

(...)

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Good Bad Product
Review: Okay its simple as this. When you have a virus the product is useful, but when there isn't one you are stuck with constant updating and your computer slows down when it pops up to ask you to check something for a virus. 90% of the time there is no problem. I always have to hit the refresh button!

Another thing bad is the fact that the tech support is just WRONG. They practically abuse their customers, visit their site and you'll see, most of the problems you are going to have with ur detector isn't answered clearly or at all. Cheap and money loving, oh well. They charge CRAZY amounts of $$$ if you have a problem and you need someone over. If you want a better virus detector many people have said the later versions are good. I think I can fix the pop up thing, trying to do it right now. Everything is just way too expensive nowadays. $3 for a can of soup! $3 for a hotdog!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: WARNING! YOUR COMPUTER IS AT RISK!! DO NOT BUY!!
Review: ZERO RATING!!

I have used Norton products from the Windows 3.1 days. I have used Norton Systemworks (NSW) and Norton Antivirus (NAV) since 1997......I guess from Systemworks version 1.0!!

My complaint is not about installation issues or incompatibilities with other pieces of software, or even memory hogging issues. Over the years I have learnt to fine-tune NSW to make it work for me. And in the 15-20 times that I have installed NSW, I have had to do only 2 manual uninstalls (NSW v.2.2...I think!). A little painful, but I got it working.

My complaint is that NORTON ANTIVIRUS DOES NOT WORK!!!!

BACKGROUND:
I needed some partitioning software. Partition Magic (PM) (Another Symantec product, though in all fairness I had this issue last year too when Powerquest owned PM) had just botched up a 3 step partition routine. I was trying to see if there was any freeware/shareware I could use.

MY EXPERIENCE:
I updated NAV with the latest definitions and proceeded to download. I downloaded this partition software and ran the zip folder through NAV. NO virus detected! I then extracted the files and ran the extracted files through NAV. NO virus detected! I ran the install, but nothing happened, I ran it again and nothing happened. I clicked on "windows search" and it gave me an error message. I suspected that I had been infected. I went to Mcafee and ran their FreeScan software, within the first 5000 files they had detected a few instances of Trojan Horse "Exploit-MHTRedir" and of a dropper program "Multidropper-jz". I let the scan complete. I did not have a Mcafee product or subscription, so was unable to delete the virus.

I was confident that NAV would pick up these infections and clean them out. I ran NAV scan, BUT IT DID NOT PICK UP THESE TROJAN HORSES. I was SHOCKED!!
I thought, "Hey! Maybe Symantec does not update the "LiveUpdate definitions" everyday. Let me try using the Norton web-scan similar to Mcafee's FreeScan. It scanned and came up with NADA! Nothing!!
I thought, well, let me just look up the virus library, pickup the definitions and apply them manually. This was the SHOCKER!! Symantec acknowledged the existence of these viruses and based on the dates of the virus definitions (April 06, 2004), and my frequency of updates, I should have had protection against these viruses.

I was in total shock......I was living in false security. I had trusted this company to look after me and my data, but it let me down. I will NEVER, EVER PURCHASE a Symantec product again!!!!

MCAFEE EXPERIENCE:
On the Mcafee side, they had these Trojan Horses as well as the "droppers" and their variants listed in detail (compared to Symantec's one generic listing).

On the Mcafee Scan, I noticed that one of the droppers was tagged to IE and so decided to go with a retail copy of Mcafee, I drove down to my local Walmart at 11.30pm (I am kinda' obsessive, compulsive!!) and picked up a copy. I installed it, but I could not get the latest updates.

I dialed into their chat service and, WOW! I was connected to one of their agents instantly. Within 5 minutes I had got instructions to uninstall Mcafee, download the latest definitions and run a DOS Scan.

I followed the instructions and half-hour later, I got a report saying that 6 instances of Trojan Horses and dropper variants had been cleaned from my system. I Googled for the virus and noticed that the dropper could drop an instance each time a browser was opened....that might account for the new instances!

Norton Anti-Virus is USELESS. VERY, VERY DISAPPOINTING!!! NEVER AGAIN!!!!


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