Customer Reviews

Norton Cleansweep 2000 4.7

If you buy it alone you're essentially saying that you have other software outside the Norton family which you can use for your other utility needs, and that you hope to be able to use this one Norton component in concert with it.

This is a potentially disappointing stance to take. Norton products are notoriously ill-suited for use with other utilities. They have a way of being jealous of system resources, making your comnputer sometimes lock up or crash if you're trying to run with other utility software simultaneously.

More to the point, I personally think that if you're really going to buy a standalone cleanup program, Cybermedia's Uninstaller is in some ways better. While it takes care of much of what Uninstaller does, Cleansweep isn't quite as vigorous or thorough. Uninstaller cleans up not only the detritus of internet use, it's a complete get-rid-of-anything program. It's great for COMPLETELY uninstalling a program right the first time, whereas Cleansweep tends to be more useful for cleaning up incomplete uninstalls.

Cleansweep makes up for a certain lack of functionality compared to Uninstaller by being a MUCH faster load. In order to be effective, Uninstaller has to scan your entire hard disk, file-by-file. OBviously, if you have a big hard disk with a lot of files, this can take a LOT of time; it takes me 30 minutes to load uninstaller. However, a year ago it only took about 5 minutes. So if you don't have a lot of files on your computer, Uninstaller is probably the clear winner. For everyone else, though, you've really got to consider how much faster Cleansweep loads. It makes Uninstaller's extra features less enticing--nevermind the fact that Cybermedia's other utilities are far inferior to their Norton equivalents.

Overall, then, Cleansweep is a solid program, but there's no reason to buy it alone. It rates a 1-star in this stand-alone format, taking value-for-money as the most important factor.

In my opinion; Norton used to make some great products. I used to recommend their Norton Utilities and Anti Virus programs to friends and install them on computers I assembled for them. Sadly, this has changed. They now have an online forum where you are forced to ask your questions. They may even get around to answering your question, but it takes days to get correct answers (if ever). The quality of their software has plummeted also. Several other companies make similar products that are FAR superior. Not only do I not give them a positive review, I strongly recommend you do NOT use them.