[jftuga]

I have had several non-techie coworkers install this software on their home computers ranging from version 2005 to 2007. They have all had problems including dramatically slowing down the computer and making Internet Explorer consistently crash. One user had a new computer with either 512 or 1024M of RAM and the start-up time was literally over 4 minutes long. After uninstalling Norton, start-up time dramatically decreased. It saddens me to tell someone who just spent $80 on this software that they should probably uninstall it and use something else. Is there a way to make this program work in a fast, stable, non-intrusive manner?

What are other people's experiences & opinion of this product?

Thanks,
-John

[Tarun]

Yes, all Norton/Symantec products are total garbage. To totally purge it from the system, use SymNRT.

Benchmark tests all over the web show how bad Norton products truly are.

What Slows Windows Down?

What Really Slows Windows Down?

And don't feel bad, I knew one person who ran a business and called himself a professional technician; yet he was pushing people to buy Norton from him.

[Pr0digy]

There are many alternatives out there, you can find a few free ones, as well.

[Jeremy]

Two best payware:
Kaspersky
NOD32

Two best freeware:
AntiVir
Avast

[Slimy]

Quote

Is this program garbage?

IMHO, yes.

Jeremy, on Jan 3 2007, 08:53 PM, said:

Two best payware:
Kaspersky
NOD32

Two best freeware:
AntiVir
Avast

QFT.

[nitroshift]

Quote

Is this program garbage?

Hell yeah!

[Maleko]

Quote

Is this program garbage?

Yep, I moved away from Norton Security a few months back, went to NOD32.

Norton just got extremely annoying, I will say they used to be good (many years ago), but now they just hog your system resources majorly!

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Norton is just terrible. Huge system hog, slows down computer and the firewall just sucks, frequent security prompts that won't go away. Now I'm using AVG which isn't too bad.

[DigeratiPrime]

Norton was never really that good, its just much better software came out and Norton rather than try to catch up became worse every year.

[luke.mccormick]

I spent 4 hours uninstalling NIS on my cousin's computer ebcause NIS and all the other norton products on the comptuer were slowing it down and p***ing me off... the SYMNRT was the only thing that would uninstall it, going into add/remove programs and clicking uninstall crashed it, running NIS crashed it, neither of the 3, IE, Firefox or opera could connect to HTTPs or FTP sites.

[LLXX]

Quote

Norton Internet Security, Is this program garbage?

A definitive Yes.

[sylvianorth]

Isn't it great when we all agree?
Norton Internet Security must truly be special!

[nitroshift]

sylvianorth, on Jan 5 2007, 05:11 AM, said:

Norton Internet Security must truly be special!

[Maleko]

sylvianorth, on Jan 5 2007, 05:11 AM, said:

Isn't it great when we all agree?

hehe, just a shame symantec dont see it!

I hate going round peoples houses to setup wireless networks, internet etc, and find NIS pre-installed by the manufacture....EVIL!

[N1K]

Norton sucks big time, unfortunatelly we're using it in our company

[Tarun]

Does your boss push it onto people to use?

[awergh]

some one i knew had it preinstalled had to change the date in the bios to be able to uninstall nis because windows wouldnt work properly because it had expired and they didnt want nis

still waiting for this to happen
http://forums.spybot...read.php?t=7683

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Seriously, I use to like Norton, ever since Norton Internet Security 2003 came out their products went downhill. I don't understand why Norton uses up so many resources for no apparent reason. If so many people criticized about its performance and RAM usage, why doesn't Symantec make changes? Thank god I uninstalled Norton's products, they are all garbage. The worse product I've used was Norton Ghost 9.0, too slow, POS didn't even work properly.

[Jeremy]

I'd say Norton needs to totally re-write their software up to about 5.00 version numbers before they can be considered "slightly decent" again.

[CoffeeFiend]

Is it garbage? No, it's much WORSE than that. Saying it's garbage is too much of an understatement, so doesn't describe it accurately enough. I cannot find a word strong enough to express how bad it truly is.

Lots of us could go on very long rants about it: how it sucks, how it makes a PC slower than a dead snail hibernating, how buggy norton stuff is (we've had sooooo much trouble caused by SAV!), how it consistently keeps getting slower and more bloated every year, how the registration process is getting increasingly and unnecessarily troublesome (very long serials, online activation, etc), how dumbed down it is, how sub-par the firewall and AV are (and how much better even free apps often are), how easily it gets "pwned" ("start keylogger" anyone? or using WMI in a vbscript to disable the services, etc), how their support (even paid support) sucks, how intrusive it is, how hard it is to uninstall it (there's an app just for that!) and how it usually breaks things, how much of a waste of money it is (definitions/renewals cost money too - not just initial purchase), etc.

I would rate it a solid 0 out of 10, and that's already being generous.

Their days of making useful apps are long gone (like the original norton utilities). Some of the older versions of some apps are still somewhat useful (e.g. ghost 8.2) but are usually surpassed by the alternatives (i.e. acronis trueimage). I'm sure they'll manage to make all their new acquisitions (like veritas' products) suck beyond belief too - it's just a matter of time.