Customer Reviews

Norton Internet Security Suite 2007 - 3 User [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(83)

 

 

I received this product on Oct. 26,2006 and have been using it for only three days, so my observations are a little limited.

I successfully installed the program and created an account with Symantec -- no problems there. It ran a full system scan and found and removed some problem files. However, as another rater posted, it slowed down Windows to an agonizing crawl (it took over a minute just to launch an application). Every click of the mouse key meant at least 20 seconds for Windows to respond.

Disappointed and wondering if I was going to have to invoke Symantec's warranty of a 60-day refund if not satisfied, I uninstalled the program. With Norton gone, Windows ran FASTER than before I had installed Norton! It must have cleaned up something.

So, I went to Symantec's site and found their "FAQs" (had to use their search engine to find them) and looked for a problem similar. There was one, and it said that my system might not have enough memory. I checked the system requirements on the box, and it said 256M required, and I have 2G. I re-installed Norton (no problems), let it run a full system scan, and began experimenting by disabling all except the basic feature. Windows ran normally. I then added features back (by checking the appropriate box) one at a time and discovered the most resource-consuming routine is the Automatic Updates. I'm not sure, but it seems that the speed of your internet connection would affect this also (I have a high-speed connection).

With the automatic update disabled, I ran a full system scan again, and it found one virus. Windows now runs normally, and I'm satisfied. Will just have to remember to run the updates periodically.

Update: No need to remember to run updates periodically. It has a feature that reminds you when Symantec has an update ready.

Update #2: Some virus must have gotten by this program because only about four months into the subscription, I got the "blue screen of death." The computer would not load Windows, but it would let me run it in Safe Mode. I could not solve this problem and called in an expert. He was not able to solve it either. I ended up builting a new computer, but this time I installed AVG (free) anti-virus, the one the expert recommended. It seems to work better than Norton.

Gotta admit I am one of those who think the only 100% secure computer is unplugged. But even then somebody can break into your home or business and steal it...so I guess I should make that 99.9%.<G> Therefore I am not in the habit of giving 5 stars to any security program, but I am taken by this one.

Though everyone needs security, it's easy to go overboard and make the cure far worse than the potential disease.Have heard horror stories about past Norton interfaces and programs. If true, they sure have changed.

I am always happy when a suite installs easily and remains conflict free. In fact I move to the security suite approach years ago, due to conflicts I experienced with separates.

Folks I symathize with any and all sorts of installation problems...they happen...but everybody should know to uninstall all their security programs ...then restart the computer...before they install a new security suite.

I use spysweeper. Uninstalled. Restarted. Loaded the suite. Reinstalled spysweeper. No conflicts. Have since dropped spysweeper because I don't think I need it (never finds anything but cookies on my system..and there are better ways to get rid of those)

Anyway, I was a Trend Micro PC Cillin user for many years. Had problems...many problems...with their 2007 version. Think they pushed it to market too soon.

Tried Kaspersky's internet suite. And liked it very much, though it tugs on your sleeve often with shield popups ( at the more secure settings). My only small problem with K was a sharp reduction in my broadband upload times...most probably due to their excellent http buffering scans. That problem might vanish in the new build which will be free to suscribers. I was going to hang on to K, and then I read a rave review in PC Magazine for the new 2007 Norton security suite build. Symantec has almost always tested well, but been far from user friendly. At least that was the rep. But I decided to give the 2007 suite a spin.

One factor was their "intelligent" shields. Perhaps due to their work with Sygate (Symantec had purchased them). You do have the option of having the program inform you about programs seeking outbound traffic...and then making the decisions yourself...but they recommend delegating that responsibility to the resident expert (Symantec). Allowing them to decide. And if the PC Magazine's test are any guide, they decide very skillfully. Allowing the legit to pass...but smothering the malicious. The program protects itself and the rest of your computer very well.

There was a big green Norton antiphishing bar on IE7 once I installed...but that was easy to remove from the Explorer tools..and the phishing protection still runs in the background.( and accoridng to PC Magazine is best of breed. Just as this suite was the first to identify and remove every one of their test keyloggers).

The primary program module is elegant in its simplicty and very easy to navigate. Stays out of your face. But has a complete array of information and settings

I set up an automatic full system scan each day, and it opens a large window when it begins. But you can minimize and the program adjusts to your other computer activities while it scans in the background. My computer does slow down during a scan but the effect lessens as the scan continues. Then it just informs you of the results later. The average full system scan on my computer usually lasts about 25 minutes. Quick scans of critical areas are much faster.

I use autoupdates. Haven't experienced the severe slowdowns another poster mentioned. I'll sometimes do a manual update at the end of the day.
I don't even know the autoupdates are happening, but the uneccessary manual ones do take a little longer than the other two suites...and sometimes require a restart.

In my opinion, all internet security suites will slow you down at least a little. None have what I would call a feather light touch. But again, this suite does not slow down my system much at all. Can still do all I want to do.

You have to manually set the antispyware system to go after low risk items (soemtimes a cookie or two). It doesn't do that by default.( which me, I applaud)

Antispam, Ad and popup blocking, ( none of which I use); and privacy controls (which I do use) are free add ons...available for download on the Symantec site....kinda hard to find though.

In summary, I like the interface. I am confident in the protection. And I really like that I don't usually even notice the program is there.

I run this suite behind a hardware firewall (just an extra levee...belt and suspenders); and I feel about 99% secure.Doubt if I will ever make it to that last 1%...but I feel that way in the bathtub too. VBG

Of all the suites I have used over the years, this is my favorite. Just thought I would share my opinion...FWIW. Best of Luck to All.

This review is more of a warning then a review. I just want those of you who are thinking of buying this product to know a few truths before you take the dive.
Lie number 1: This edition say that you have the right to use it on three different computers for a year. This is a lie! I have spent hours on the phone with Symantec's "Tech Support"(LOL!)and I have been told repeatedly by customer service reps of all levels that the term "3 USER" as stated on the box, actually means "3 Activations". What this means is that if your Windows OS crashes and you have to reinstall Windows and NIS 2007, or if you have to reinstall NIS 2007 for any reason what so ever, you have to reactivate the installation and Symantec counts that as a different computer. To give you an example, I will tell you what happened to me. I have a desktop and my daughter has a laptop. I bought NIS 2007 and installed it on both. 2 weeks after I installed NIS 2007 on my desktop, my hard drive went out and I had to buy a new one and install Windows and NIS 2007 (reactivation required) on it. About a month later I bought a laptop for my self and when I tried to install NIS 2007 on it, it would not let me activate it. I spent two days arguing with symantec about it, but they would not back down. When I explained to them that I had to reinstall the program because of a hard drive failure, they just kept saying that I needed to buy an new copy. So they are lying when they say you can use this program on 3 computer for 1 year, because as any PC technician will tell you, PCs and Windows are riddled with errors and require repair all the time, sometimes multiple times a year. Symantec does not have the right to arbitrarily redefine commonly used terms to their own liking, so what they are doing is not only lying, it is false advertising, and that is illegal. Anyone want to join me in a law suit?

Lie number 2: According to a statement from a Symantec CEO published in the PC World Magazine. NIS 2007 has been rebuilt from the ground up and is 30% faster than previous versions and it uses 30% less systems resources. I have been a NIS user ever since the 2002 version. I am a A+ certified PC technician and I routinely measure the system resources consumption of major programs that load on Windows start up. I would have to say that NIS 2007 uses about double the system resources as NIS 2006. It adds 30 seconds to 1 minute (sometimes much more) to your system start up time depending on the speed of you system. I have noticed very little change in it's scanning speed, but I can say that it not any faster then 2006. My daughter's laptop is an older Celeron laptop. It ran fine with NIS 2006 installed. After installing NIS 2007, it has slowed to a crawl. There is even typing lag when typing in WORD. It now takes her laptop over 6 minutes to just start up. My brand new Core 2 Duo laptop with 2 gigs of DDR2 ram takes over 4 minutes start up with NIS 2007 installed. Another problem with this program is that it does not know how to share. Every time you start your system up, it checks for updates and installs them. During this process which can take several minutes, NIS will consume almost 100% of you CPU's resources. Most people are oblivious to what's going on because it's being done in the background. What they do notice though, is that it takes 2 minutes to start up Internet Explorer from the time they click on the big blue "e" icon. Your system will be basically locked down during this update process and you had best sit back and relax and let it finish. Trying to do anything else during the (Daily) NIS 2007 update process will just prolong the process and possible lead to a system crash.

Just know that you had better have a really fast computer to run this program.

My last warning to you is that Symantec has no Tech support to speak of. Most companies at least have a user based help forum where their product users can get together and help each other, but not Symantec. I guess NIS 2007 protects your computer alright, but you had better pray that you don't have any problems with it, and God forbid you should have to reinstall it.

The bottom line is that Symantec does not back up what they say or the product they produce. You have been warned!

I read all the reviews and decided to purchase Norton 2007 Internet Security anyway. I have used Norton products for more than 10 years and thought "It will be just as good or better than the 2006 version. I was wrong.

I will focus on 1 item only: Parental Control

I installed Norton 2007 and went to the Symantec website to download the parental control module (Having to go to the website instead of it being an option on the install disk was one of those negative changes between 2006 and 2007 versions).
I used the set-up function and immediately began to see the more significant changes that dramatically lowered my opinion of the 2007 version.
1. Web activity log is no longer there. I use the web activity log as a cross reference to the restrictions log to see what my teenage children were looking at when they "hit" a restriction. Often restrictions are simply undesired advertising for dating websites that are on the innocent web-pages. By eliminating the web activity log I also do not have every website visited because the converse is also true concerning not so innocent websites that are not restricted. I surely hope that Norton brings this back in 2008 or I will simply drop them altogether.
2. Instead of individual levels for each child there is only one general setting level. You can set everyone to child or teenager or adult. Stupid move. I have a 13 year old, older teenagers and my wife each having several accounts. I want to set up individual accounts for each like in the 2006 version. Norton really screwed up.

I consider both of these issues to be "killer" issues and uninstalled the 2007 version, reinstalled the 2006 version and re-subscribed for another year. I will use this year to investigate other internet security products so that I am not relying on Norton as my preferred software. Unless Norton fixes these issues I will not purchase Norton again.

PS. Besides all the above I had many installation issues that are well reported below in other customers reviews.

I own a computer repair business, and I get a kick out of scanning virus-infected computers that have this worthless software on it. If you think the program is doing its job, and catching all of the bad stuff, think again! It doesn't catch a tenth of the stuff out there, and is also a resource hog that slows down some computers to the brink of crashing. Not to mention it has an acute knack for killing internet connections from time to time even after you've supposedly disabled the program firewalls. Don't waste your money!

I bought a new Desktop PC installed with Vista. It came preinstalled with McAfee 2007. I have been using Norton products for years, so I bought a 3 user package of North Internet Security 2007. For the 60 days of the trial, my computer ran flawlessly. But it was time to install Norton as McAfee had run its course. I installed the program last night, which took 45 minutes with the Vista update from Symantec, required updates, restarts and the full system scan. After this time my computer, which as I said ran flawlessly for 60 days, well now every 60 minutes I get the blue screen of death and a forced restart. I contacted Symantec's customer support only to be greeted with an hour and forty five minutes wait to chat with an analysts (seems that I was not the only one with Norton troubles). After all this time, the advice I was given was....uninstall and reinstall!!!! Gee, Einstein, I would have never done that already before I wasted my time contacting you. But the Symantec analyst was firm that this was the problem. So I took my morning and uninstalled and reinstalled and...THE SAME BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH but now in under an hour of use!!! I'm uninstalling this virus and buying a McAfee package ASAP.

Oh also, during the time my computer was not crashing, it ran SLOW!! It is a 2.8 gig processor with 2 gigs of ram but it ran as if it were a 386 processor with 32 megs of ram. And everything you run, Norton needs you to approve its connection...EVERYTHING. You can allow Norton to decide what can and cannot connect so you do not have to click every five second, but then you will not be able to user 1/2 of your programs as the geniuses at Norton did not include them in their `safe' list.
I regret buying this and only wish I could give it ZERO stars!!!

It loaded fine, must of missed fine print about removing Spam product and Parental controls dumb me. Most controls and settings in 2006 are gone in 2007, definately a dumded up product for users not familiar with any computer set up. Would trade this in for the old 2006 in a heartbeat, compared 2006 was a 5 Star product.....they have lost me as a customer after this one expires!!

I've tried several different Internet security products, and they're all lousy. Norton Internet Security certainly works well enough protecting your system. But like its competitors, it has major annoyances. The user interface is very slow. The worst is that it just starts doing things behind the scenes without telling you anything. All of a sudden, your machine will slow to a crawl for 15-20 minutes at a time (we're talking 3 minutes just to load Task Manager, for example) and sure enough, Live Update, their updating system, is running in the background. No message, no way to stop or postpone it. In fact, there is a general lack of messages in this software. You can click on something and nothing will happen for as much as a minute. No hourglass, no message to wait, just no response. Thinking nothing has happened may tempt you to click again. The result can sometimes be locking up the program or even Windows itself.

Automatic Live Update is supposed to be optional. It can be turned off. But in fact, turning it off has little effect. It runs automatically from time to time anyway. This can be especially annoying if you're running on battery power, as you can use up to a third of your battery before it finishes and your machine is back to normal speed. The only way I've found to turn it off (after some hours back and forth with their online support folks) is to go into administrative services and set Automatic LiveUpdate Scheduler to "manual", and even then it can come back to life from time to time.

Based on the inability to schedule Live Update reliably, I won't renew this product at the end of the year.

I just want to start out by saying that I have been a loyal Symantec/Norton customer over the years, and have enjoyed using Norton SystemWorks for at least 3-4 years. I liked the product so much that I bought Symantec stock. However, this year I could not find Norton Sytemworks 2007 at an acceptable price and decided to try Norton Internet Security. This was a huge mistake. The product is apparently designed to be "smarter than the user" and by default performs the majority of its security tasks without notifying the user or giving the user a chance to override the security settings. For starters, it slowed down my computer to a snail's pace, taking forever to reboot XP. This is a minor annoyance compared to the other bigger problems. It somehow rendered my administrator password useless and prevented me from modifying installations or uninstalling certain programs, and simply displays a message reading "access denied" or "program file in use". My browser and outlook email work fine, but it prevents a number of my online trading applications from accessing the internet at all, providing no messages saying access was blocked, nor giving me the opportunity to allow these programs access to the internet - it simply prevents the program from loading, and in some cases the application window just disappears, while in others I get a message that the offending application has terminated abnormally. One would think that modifying the Program Acces Control settings for these applications by setting them to "Allow" would do the trick. Nope. I even tried turning off the firewall, intrusion protection and all other features of Norton altogether and then re-booting to see if that solved the problem. Nope. Still blocks my online trading applications from getting online. I thought that perhaps uninstalling these programs and re-installing them while being monitored by Norton (as much as that seemed to be an unnecessary hassle), would do the trick. Well, this approach didn't work either because Norton denies my access to any of the applications' files, producing a message reading "access denied." This problem is the same whether I use the "Add or Remove Programs" feature in Control Panel, or if I actually go into the folder and try to delete it directly. By the way, the so called "Help" index conveniently doesn't provide any support in these areas of resolving the blocking of legitimate applications or allowing the user to make modifications to the installations of these programs. Symantec should be ashamed of itself for putting a product like this in the marketplace. What's the point of a security product if it renders the computer virtually useless? Isn't that what malicious code does to computers in the first place? You would be much better off running a simple Norton Anti-Virus program or Systemworks than basically paying Norton to disable your computer by buying and installing Norton Internet Security. I would conclude by saying that I am relatively computer savvy, and given that I had all these problems after being a happy user of all the Norton Systemworks features for several years, I shudder at the thought of the productivity losses this program will cause for users who don't know how to undo the damage done once Norton Internet Security has been installed.

UPDATE: I threw in the towel and decided to uninstall this pig. The final chapter in this nightmare is that the uninstall process also uninstalled MS Office 2003 and all its programs, IE 7, Mozilla Firefox, and a number of other applications. Fortunately, I had all my .pst files in a separate directory and didn't lose any emails. I had to do a system recovery to a prior date to get my computer back to where it was before the NIS nightmare began. Thanks for nothing, Symantec! My final advice is if you decide to buy this product, make sure to back up any critical files on external media before intstalling!

I am a software engineer and have used Norton IS for years. I just upgraded to 2007 IS.
First problem: the install was on a machine with Norton IS 2004. There is no mention of needing to uninstall any existing Norton product in either the Norton user manual or the install script. The install hung after a few seconds with no messages (!!!). After trying that a few times I did an uninstall of Norton IS 2004. Then I got a file-not-found during the 2007 install. I had to use a special Norton removal tool and then the install worked. Note that Norton is supposed to get rid of the hardest malware to remove, yet it can't even remove a previous version of Norton (and doesn't tell you you need to remove a previous version, or how to get that done !!!!!).

Second: I, like hundreds of thousands of users, need to get into a VPN. Norton's 34 page user manual does not even have the words "VPN" or "Virtual Private Network" in it!!. I like enormous nunmbers of others (see all the online posts) was not able to get into any VPN, yet got no error messages and nothing showed up in the Norton logs!!. No firewall rule I could create helped at all. I then found some work-arounds for the problem on a university web site: turn off port stealthing - it stealths VPNs you want to get to!!! How terribly poor can Norton get??

I have run into 3 more problems. And I have done a Live Update and am current as of March 11, 2007. This does not bode well for others trying it at this point. I waited 3 months after purchasing IS 2007 hoping to avoid these exact kinds of problems. Four others I work with have had to give up using Norton 2007 IS. How pathetic can Symantec be in 2007 to have all those problems, not fix them, not let people know they exist, not put correct information in their own logs and not document anything of value in their user manual (or help function)?