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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Activation and slowdowns destroy a once great product, February 2, 2004
By A Customer
I have been using Norton Antivirus since Y2k when I purchased it as part of Norton System Works Pro 2001. The software was a bargain back then. It ran very well in Windows 98SE after you disabled the file backup features of Norton Utilities that ran in the background with the default installation. The Norton Antivirus always worked great and it stopped many incoming viruses over the past several years from reaching my email Inbox and the Norton Utilities kept my computer system files clean. I also used Zone Alarm Pro along with it to provide great security on my cable modem broadband internet connection. It is now the year 2004 and I have Windows XP Pro but I still use Zone Alarm 4 and Norton System Works Pro 2003 on my main computer and will do so until my subscription updates run out. However my 1Ghz Pentium 3 notebook computer that was running the same Norton 2003 and Zone Alarm Pro 4 began to slow to a crawl with each live update that I downloaded. It became so slow it was annoying me to use that computer at all. Then along came Norton System Works Pro 2004 which has Norton Antivirus 2004 bundled with it. I was ready to go out and purchase the product to update my 2003 version in the near future but decided to read some reviews about it. All I heard was one nightmare after another on the review sites and about how flawed the activation system was just after its release. Then I had a friend purchase and try the retail version of Norton System Works 2004 on his computer and his experience validated many of those negative claims. Here you have a company in Symantec that took the most widely used and popular antivirus and utilities products in the world and seriously decreased my loyalty to their brand. Although no one liked when Microsoft required activation with Windows XP at least they brought you a superior and more stable software product with support to back it up. Even though there have been some serious security problems since its release I believe Windows XP was a huge improvement over previous versions of Windows which justifies the current hassles with the Microsoft product activation feature. With Symantec's 2004 products you now have a buggy and annoying product activation feature and increasingly sluggish and bloated software that significantly decreases the speed of even the latest 2 to 3 Ghz computers. The question is why would they do this ? Only the Symantec marketing and development departments can answer that question. Thankfully we live in a diverse capitalist society that allows for competition. Needless to say I jumped off the Norton ship this year in favor of a speedier and more hastle free product in the name of McAfee Antivirus 2004. After my Norton 2003 subscription ran out I uninstalled the entire Norton System Works Pro 2003 program and I installed the new McAfee Antivirus 2004 on my notebook running Windows XP Home. I still use Zone Alarm Pro 4 for a software firewall. Compared with running Norton 2003 I could not believe the improvement in system speed with McAfee. The new McAfee and Zone Alarm Pro seems to be the right combination for me now and when my Norton subscription runs out on my 2.4 Ghz desktop system I will very likely will change that computer to the new McAfee Antivirus program also. It is too bad that Symantec effectively messed up one of the best antivirus products on the market. If you are running Norton 2003 or earlier and do not want to change to McAfee you might want to simply extend your subscription service for one or two more years and save yourself the hassle of buying the retail boxed version of Norton AV 2004. I know that I am not the only customer that feels this way about Norton AV 2004 and I hope that Symantec learns from its mistakes and returns to offering what customers really want with the next System Works Pro 2005 and Antivirus 2005 version release.
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