Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 187
 Past experience should be a warning September 14, 2007
William A. Levinson (Wilkes-Barre, PA USA)
23 out of 77 found this review helpful
As a past user of Norton Internet Security (experience with NIS 2002), I feel an obligation to warn people off of this product.
(1) In 2004, a Live Update apparently created a situation in which my computer's performance slowed to a crawl, with NIS using about 99 percent of the CPU as shown by Task Manager.
(2) More than a dozen E-mails to Symantec's customer service and technical support representatives went unanswered, as did at least one fax addressed to the department's manager. This demonstrates the company's attitude toward quality and customer service.
(3) After early 2006, I could no longer buy virus definition updates. Symantec told me I'd have to buy the newest edition of their software, despite online reviews about it ruining entire computers (people had to reformat their hard drives). I recall that one of their technical support people said it was a good idea to reformat one's hard drive every so often. Instead, I bought Frisk F-prot (same annual price for virus definitions) and it has worked fine for 1.5 years.
(4) I can't uninstall Norton Antivirus via Windows Control Panel. If I disable the registry keys, it jams Word for Windows and every other Windows program that calls for a virus scan. In other words, even though I no longer use it, it still takes up space on my computer and I can't get rid of it.
I was an advocate of Symantec products five years ago. My more recent experience is that its software is of poor quality, and it has nothing but contempt for its customers.
Within 9 days it messed up my computer January 10, 2008
John Edwards (Manhattan, KS USA)
23 out of 25 found this review helpful
Pro: In my 9 days' experience with it, it didn't slow down my computer.
Con: 9 days after installation it failed to update itself and pointed me to its web with directions to manually update the product. So I followed its instructions and updated the product. The update appeared to be successful. But when the computer rebooted, Windows XP complained that it couldn't load the user profile. Then I had to back up my computer and profiles, system restore, ... many many fun things that I like more than drinking beer. Finally I got my profile back and guess what, NIS asked me to update it again and failed, and pointed to its web for manual updates. There must be a conspiracy between MS and Symantec to get users into this endless loop. I promptly uninstalled NIS2008 at the end of the 9th day.
Very Disappointing: Norton Name, Not Much Else October 6, 2007
Mr. Voltaire (Dallas, TX)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
I could write a review that will take most of the afternoon but considering the product quality I'll skip it and spend my time on something more worthy.
In chronological order:
- Installation simple without issues
- 4 weeks without update issues
- LiveUpdate error stating update failed to install. Online support advises to wait 2 weeks
- Waited 2 weeks, same update issue. 2 months later, still same issue
- Support advises to remove/re-install. If that doesn't work what's next, format re-install WinXP? Norton is owned by Microsoft now?
- Gave product to Goodwill (seriously)
Whatever happened to the good old Norton Utilities days when Peter Norton was still in control?
Gets worse with each version November 17, 2007
A. Oporto (Philly, PA USA)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
I purchased the 3 user edition recently. I installed on my own laptop, and have found it is much harder to find settings and configure vs. previous versions. Upgrades are supposed to improve the product, but Symantec found a way to make this version worse. They have dumbed down the UI to the point of making it useless. When was my last virus scan? When was my last LiveUpdate? Good luck finding this info now. They of course make it easy to see how many days you have left in your subscription, so you are ready to shell out more $$$ 364 days from now.
Even more aggravating, I installed on my wife's machine, and every couple times she boots up, it tells her she has to activate the product, when it has already been activated. Sometimes clicking the big and flashy 'Fix now' button takes care of it, and other times it stays broken so that the software does nothing.
Obviously the folks in the Symantec QA and UAT departments are asleep at the wheel. Looks like this is the last time I buy Norton.
 A Good Product for the Inexperienced, but NO ONE ELSE October 17, 2007
Alejandro (Illinois, USA)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful
I don't review products often, but I felt I had to for this one. I recently reinstalled Windows on my computer, and was amazed at how fast it was running. The next day, I installed Norton, and guess what happened? It became just as slow as it had been before. It's a beast of a machine. A real resource hog. And true, while many anti-virus products are a little heavy on the memory, this one's atrocious, even though it's a 'light' version of the 2007 one. Of course, that might be bearable if the protection were good, but guess what? The product's just a pain in every way. The first thing you might notice is that is installs it's own 'Norton Toolbar' into whatever browser you're using. And it locks it in. Seriously, you cannot remove it without uninstalling Norton. Even reinstalling the browser after wiping it clean won't do the trick. Norton just sticks its toolbar on top of the browser every time it detects one. And it only slows your computer even more.
Then of course is the question of reliability. I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but already it's decided not to load correctly twice, and when I try to 'fix' it, or restart it, it asks to be activated (I'd already activated it) Then it says it can't activate at the time, and goes back to the menu asking me to 'fix' its status. So, twice so far I've had no protection for a day or so while it's had these fits.
The menus and configuration too are designed for people who are idiots around computers. If you've grown used to Norton menus though, or aren't much of a computer wiz and need easy menus (but those that don't let you do what you want if it isn't preset) this might be for you, because you probably won't care about the extra toolbars or sluggishness. But if you care about performance, and hate seeing your anti-virus software spam you with a toolbar, popups every time you fill a form (even if you say don't warn me again, it still does), and other random messages, don't buy this. I've never tried another anti-virus suite except for McAffee, which has been criticized as well, but I've had it. I never get viruses anyways, so I might even just uninstall this and run without protection, because this is just unbearable. It might be keeping me safe when it's working, but it's keeping me safe by making my computer nigh unusable.
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