Product Description

UPG NORTON 360 RET IN

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1962 in Software
• Brand: Norton from Symantec
• Released on: 2007-03-09
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows XP Professional
• Dimensions: .62 pounds

Manufacturer's Description:
Norton 360 is designed to deliver all-in-one security for everything the computer users in your family care about. Easy to use, it helps provide automatic and transparent protection from viruses and spyware, fraudulent Web sites, phishing scams, hackers, identity theft, and more. With a renewable subscription, up to three PCs in your household can be provided the Norton 360 protection, safeguarding your family when they play games, send and receive email, download files, chat, or surf the Web. And transaction security features will allow you to shop and bank online with confidence.

Norton 360 also helps keep your PCs tuned for peak performance and safeguards the data on them by making it easy to back up photos, music, financial documents, and other files and restore them at any time. Flexible options allow you to back up your files to CD, DVD, and USB devices. For even more convenience, you can also set up automatic backups to an attached hard drive or a secure onl! ine storage service* to safeguard your important files in the event something happens to your PC. And for enhanced performance, a smart background scheduler automatically schedules key Norton 360 functions such as scans, backups, and tune-ups so that they don’t interfere with your PC activities.

*Requires high-speed Internet access; 2 GB online storage included, with option to purchase more.

To use this software upgrade you must own any of the following Symantec software packages:

• Norton Internet Security (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Antivirus (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Systemworks (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Personal Firewall (2006 or 2007)

Manufacturer's Description:
Norton 360 is all-in-one protection that keeps you, your family, your PC, and your information protected so that you can freely engage in your everyday online activities without worry. This comprehensive solution combines Symantec’s proven, industry-leading security and PC tune-up technologies with new automated backup and anti-phishing technologies to protect your valuable data and to help guard you against identity theft. As a comprehensive security solution Norton 360 eliminates the need to purchase and manage multiple products and provides you with a full circle of protection in one highly automated service that:

Defends your PC against a broad range of threats
Norton 360 utilizes Symantec’s leading security technologies to intercept a range of threats including hackers, viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. It also detects and blocks spyware and other unwanted programs that can steal your identity or slow down your computer’s performance.

Safeguards you against online identity theft
New innovative technologies detect and prevent online fraud and phishing attacks to help protect your online identity. Norton 360 provides zero-hour threat protection by authenticating popular shopping and banking Web sites automatically, and by detecting fraudulent sites using advanced detection technologies.

Protects your important files from loss
Automated backup and recovery features help make sure that your important photos, files, and music are safe and secure so you can share and enjoy them and not worry about them being lost. Norton 360 discovers any new files and backs up that data automatically. It supports both local (external drives, CD/DVD, home network) and online backup locations. Once set up, the online backup option requires virtually no user intervention. Norton 360 enables you to conveniently store data to a secured online storage service so that you can easily restore your information when you need it.

Keeps your PC tuned up for peak performance
Integrated maintenance and optimization tools keep your computer running at its best. Clutter such as unwanted or temporary files are automatically cleaned up for you and your disk will be optimized in the background.

Provides a hassle-free user experience
The easy to understand user interface helps provide you with peace-of-mind by clearly indicating what activities are safe and how Norton 360 is providing continuous protection. You will not be bothered with constant alerts because Norton 360 automatically resolves a vast majority of security, backup, and PC tune-up issues quietly in the background.

Protects against the latest online threats
Delivered as an annual subscription service, Norton 360 automatically makes available to active subscribers both definition updates and product upgrades, helping to protect you from the latest online threats.

To use this software upgrade you must own any of the following Symantec software packages:

• Norton Internet Security (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Antivirus (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Systemworks (2006 or 2007)
• Norton Personal Firewall (2006 or 2007)

Customer Reviews

Might be great, but got a refund after a lengthy and futile attempt at installation...
I really wanted to like this. I've been using Norton Internet Security for over five years (upgrading each year) and been generally happy with it, so decided to try Norton 360 as the reviews seemed positive and the back-up facilities sounded great. However, having wasted around 15 hours over 10 days trying to get it to work properly, I've given up, got a refund and switched to another brand.

1 The software takes a long time to install. Anti-spam and parental controls are not included on the CD and have to be downloaded from the Norton site - installing everything on two (fast, big RAM, broadband) PCs took around an hour and a half (not including the time for the program to look for and install updates). This won't be a problem if...

2 ...the initial install appeared to be successful, but the next day error messages appeared saying that the software must be uninstalled and re-installed. This happened every day on one or other PC (normally both) despite the support from Symantec, meaning a wasted hour and a half at the start of every day. Shoppers of a certain age may remember spending eons waiting for software to load from a cassette recorder (ask yer dad) to early home computers like the Spectrum (whilst praying the dog didn't nudge the cable) and having to do this every time you wanted to use that particular bit of software. At one point I got quite nostalgic.

3 The support from Symantec is slow (around 48 hours to respond to an e-mail) or you have to pay premium rate phone charges for telephone support. I wasn't inclined to do this because a) the time spent uninstalling and reinstalling suggested that this might require a second mortgage and b) frankly, if I spend £50 per year on a product, I expect a degree of free help to get it running.

4 The first bit of support involved downloading and running the Symantec Removal Tool (see other comments on this page). As the tone of this sounded fairly critical, you'd imagine it might be part of the Install CD, or at least a recommendation to run it included in the instructions.

5 When this had no effect, subsequent support involved, er, removing components manually that the, er, Removal Tool hadn't. At this point, what little confidence I had left in the product began to drain away and faced with complex Selective Start-Ups (I know, it's not that tricky, but it's not far from "try a Selective Start-Up" to "re-install your operating system"), I thought I'd try another product (F-Secure), which I had up and running on both PCs in under 15 minutes.

Norton 360 may be brilliant, but I'd strongly suggest downloading the trialware version and (critically) checking it runs for a few days before you decide to buy. Even then, that may not be entirely indicative of any impending snags as part of the problem seems to be something to do with the activation / subscription process; I'm not sure if the trialware version would pick up on that.

Perfect backup system for home use
I've been doing the backups for my two computers I use at home for almost 3 months now with Norton 360. I use an external hard drive to store the backupped data on but also the online storage feature. About two weeks ago I was able to restore my main computer after a hard disk crash without any problems. I was really glad to have bought this piece of software (and to have actually done the backups;)).

Vista Compatibility
Installed great - looked good. Day 3 it started blocking me from websites 'as their security certificate had been revoked' - Amazon even? After a week of back and forth 'support' they couldn't fix it and left me with a partially working PC to drown. THe PC support is partially automated as they didn't read my responses and their advice went in circles. Plus trying to fully uninstall it is a nightmare.

It might work on XP but don't get it if you have Vista.