Customer Reviews

Norton AntiVirus 2005 Home Protection Pack - 3 Users

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

If you wish to purchase this product be aware that the each of the three licenses must be renewed seperately - even though at the time of renewal, it will still call the renewal "Norton AntiVirus 2005 3-Pack Subscriptions". I only found this out after I renewed the subscription. I believed that the "3-pack" meant 3 licenses, and that was what I was subscribing to. WRONG! My experience with customer support to gain a refund or credit has been miserable. I will not be renewing any more of my subscriptions with Norton, and after this event I will not recommend them to ANYONE! Be warned.

They are now telling me that I have to pay $25 per machine to renew the subscription! This is more than the cost of buying the product brand new through their web-site. So much for customer service/retention.

Looks like I will be shoveling more driveways this fall/winter to pay for this baloney. Or wait, maybe I will switch to an open source solution. Hmmm...

I've recently been reading a ton of complaints around the web about the Symantec Norton Antivirus and Internet Security Suite of software. The following little review has been written in response to those complaints:

One of the biggest complaints that I read about Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security is the cost. For me, however, the annual upgrade on Norton Products always ends up free--at least it has since the turn of the millenium. Inevitably if you wait long enough their rebates come out that make the upgrade to the new product absolutely cost free. This holds true even with their full suite which may retail at $70, but I've managed to get 5 copies for various computers I manage at a final cost to me of $0. Actually, with Amazon.com because I get a discount because of the A9 search engine, I think I've managed to earn a couple of bucks by installing Norton Internet Security. Next year, I'll use the rebates to do the same.

With Internet Security, the concerns of many people who are against Norton and Symantec (especially firewall) with the exception of the resource hog issue (Symantec really needs to address this issue) are handled.

Symantec needs to fix their technical service side of things by offering free help of at least some sort. They need to tone down the issues of resource hogging. But as long as they offer me free upgrades every year and consistently maintain virus-free computers (6 years virus free on all on the computers I've managed: usually 5-7 at one time) I'll stick with Symantec. Nevertheless, despite these pitfalls, as long as I can keep upgrading for free and my systems remain virus-free, Norton is my source for internet security.

http://www.hantla.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=10

STOP, before buying this product. Download a demo from the symantec web-site, cross your fingers and see if it works first, before you hand over your hard earned cash for a product that may be useless to you.

There are just too many bad reports on the internet about this Norton product not working. There are also lots of good reports on Norton Antivirus 2005 working exceptionally well. So that is why I would recommend you try the demo first.

I couldn't get Norton Antivirus 2005 to work on an older Computer running Windows98, so I ended up trying out PC-cillin which couldn't get rid of a certain viruse that kept re-installing itself on my computer. So I did a bunch of on-line research and found a better product called NOD32. Not very user friendly, but the most highly rated Antivirus software out there.

Each successive release of Norton AntiVirus (NAV) gets more difficult to install, more buggy and more loaded with bloat. I used to be a big proponent of NAV, telling all my friends to use it, but this release has finally turned me away from it.

Actually, installing on XP is not that bad. Don't even think about installing it on Windows 98 SE. I was ready to open a vein after installing and uninstalling (as per the Symantec website) over a period of several days.

And why do they have that Recycle Bin uneraser code in there? What a bother. Had to turn that off on the two XP machines where I managed to get the install to work.

No problems with the software, but Symantec Co. is awful. I paid for a subscription renewal, but my subscription ran out and there was no way to re-activate it and no way to get a refund. It is IMPOSSIBLE to obtain any customer service from this company. The instructions on their web site don't work, and good luck trying to get through on the phone. Their web site refers you to their customer service phone number, but when you call it, it refers you back to the web site. This is the second time I have had this type of problem with Symantec, I will NEVER do business with them again.

A Norton AV user for years, the upgrade to 2005 made sense. Actually bought a 3-user package for my household's 3 PCs. On 2 PCs, it slowed the PCs down considerably and causes system crashes on one.

On the 3rd PC, it installed and activated fine, but the subscription expired (actually a previous version's subscription expired, not the current one, but it did not know that). Re-installation did not work - activation of the software told me that the CD KEY is invalid (after long, long waits for the activation to run). Symantec online diagnostics did not help. Tech support performed an "over the phone" activation. A few days later, the software said its trial period has ended and ceased to work. Tech support (again) told me they would email me instructions that would definitely restore the software and 1 year subscription. They never sent the email.

Ultimately, I purchased another brand of AntiVirus software and will be asking for some money back from Norton (although I know that they will tell me I have to go back to the store I bought it from - too late for that).

In summary, Notron 2005's performance reminds me of, well, like a virus on my PCs. They've lost a long-time customer. Do yourself a favor...DON'T BUY IT.

The installation is painful, with restarts and error messages one after the other. I had to uninstall and reinstall the product 4 times and even after that the Live Update kept on refusing to update the trusted data base and the installation window kept on popping up by itself trying to configure the system.... again!Eventually it has settled down (by itself) and it does its thing. Buy it if you enjoy self-punishment.

I upgraded from McAfee 2004 professional verson (2 user) to this Nortons (3 user) 2005 edition and had no problems with installation, I had to enter the product key which is located on the cd envelope (which you want to make sure you hang on to). Nortons seems to perform a full scan alot faster then McAfee. When I first loaded Nortons I had to download several updates and then reboot my computer. Overall I'm just as happy with this as I was McAfee, I think i prefer McAfee's interface better but perhaps I just need to get used to the looks of Norton:) From what I read in the recent reviews of magazines, Nortons gets a slight edge over McAfee. They both seemed to work quite well for me though. I would think that both would perform better on newer systems, mine is a couple years old and works fine on it but I would think it might boggle a system down if it was too old and outdated.

I have just removed Norton Antivirus from 6 computers because it would repeatedly shut down, allowing all of the computers to become infected.

Having removed Norton Antivirus I find that all of the computers now run approximately 30-40% faster! I will never use Norton again, and I would urge anyone else not to even consider it. This program is awful.