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IT Symantec Releases Norton 360
Marcus Yam (Blog) - February 26, 2007 2:38 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 61 comment(s) - last by crazydrummer45.. on Mar 4 at 1:29 PM
The latest Norton suite has nothing to do with Xbox 360

Symantec today announced the availability of Norton 360, a solution that combines antivirus, antispyware, firewall, intrusion protection, anti-phishing, backup and tune-up, eliminating the need to purchase and manage multiple products. Norton 360 is now available for purchase through the Symantec online store . It will be available for purchase at various retail locations and online retailers in March 2007. An optional add-on pack with Anti-Spam and Parental Controls will also be available to Norton 360 customers in mid-March through an optional add-on pack at no additional charge.

"People today use their computers for much more than work or storing documents. If you ask most computer users what they rely on their PC for, they'll tell you they use it to surf the web, bank online, shop, keep in touch with friends and family, listen to music and store their favorite photos," said Enrique Salem, group president, Consumer Business Unit, Symantec Corp. "Norton 360 was created with these activities in mind. It not only protects against traditional online threats, but it also helps secure users' identity when transacting online and safeguards valuable files like music and photos."

"With Norton 360, Symantec is rejuvenating its consumer product line," said Andrew Jaquith, senior analyst, Yankee Group. "By combining the traditional security features with data backup and performance tuning, products like Norton 360 will expand the market for consumer security and data protection solutions."

The suggested retail price of Norton 360 is US$79.99 (includes one-year service subscription to use the product and receive Symantec's protection updates) and can be installed on up to three PCs. CNET reviewed Norton 360 and has given it a rather positive rating of 8.0.

Symantec said in a company release that Norton security solutions are designed to leverage the Windows Vista operating system, offering the “top-choice in Vista-compatible security performance.” Interestingly, Symantec CEO John Thompson said earlier this month that he hadn’t installed Windows Vista and that he saw no need for it for what he does online, adding that Symantec has not yet made a commitment to migrate to Vista.

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Norton bankrupt
By DublinGunner on 2/26/2007 3:10:28 PM , Rating: 4
Hopefully, then they go bankrupt, and noone will have to use their sub-standard, malware-esque software any more.

Hooray.




RE: Norton bankrupt
By mark2ft on 2/26/2007 3:18:09 PM , Rating: 1
And that eerie old guy with a stethoscope will stare at me no longer whenever I walk into BestBuy or CompUSA.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Spivonious on 2/26/2007 4:16:33 PM , Rating: 2
That's Peter Norton. It used to say that on the box way back in the days when Symantec bought Central Point Software's PC Tools.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By TheDoc9 on 2/26/2007 5:25:48 PM , Rating: 5
I for one am glad it's not peter north on the cover.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By akugami on 2/26/2007 7:04:06 PM , Rating: 4
I think Peter North on the cover would more accurately portray what happens to you when you buy this software suite.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By FITCamaro on 2/26/07, Rating: 0
RE: Norton bankrupt
By arazok on 2/26/2007 3:47:43 PM , Rating: 1
And I don't understand why you would choose McAfee, when there are better, cheaper alternatives...


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Vertigo101 on 2/26/07, Rating: 0
RE: Norton bankrupt
By Souka on 2/26/2007 4:45:00 PM , Rating: 3
Agree. I work IT at the HQ of my company. We, and most of our branches run Symantec Corp AV 10.1.5.xxx. Since running SAV 9.x, we have NOT been cripplied by virus outbreaks on the web like sooo many other companies.

a few branches run other solutions...even one running that AVG product. They get knocked down pretty much every time a virus outbreak happens.....

Also, the 10.x series has spy/malware protection built in that works pretty well too...

Another nice thing is that each branch can manange thier own SAV server, and I can manage them all.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Sahrin on 2/26/2007 5:32:29 PM , Rating: 1
SAV10 is excellent stuff, I've been using since my college days (where my school had a site license and we got free copies) and have since bought one of their "license packs" for all the computers at home.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By hubajube on 2/26/2007 6:29:16 PM , Rating: 2
SAV blows ass too. In fact it does more than the consumer edition. How many viruses has it detected in your email? I'll help you....NONE....because it doesn't scan email. I had a co-worker with an infected box with updated definitions and the latest version of SAV at the time. SAV sucks!


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Crusader on 2/26/2007 8:43:58 PM , Rating: 3
All of you guys' choices suck.

NOD32 is the only way to go. Or Kaspersky. But I use NOD32 for multiple reasons instead.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Andrevas on 2/26/2007 10:30:14 PM , Rating: 1
it only blows ass if you NEED it to scan your email

my box on my webserver does it for me before I even get it

otherwise, SAV 10.4 kicks major ass for me, never had a problem it couldn't stop in its tracks


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Souka on 2/27/2007 1:22:52 AM , Rating: 2
SAV 10.4? There ain't one

There's a 10.1.4 if that's what ya mean...


RE: Norton bankrupt
By Souka on 2/27/2007 1:20:29 AM , Rating: 2
SAV Corp 9.x on up can scan email.

Built-in plugin for Outlook/Exchange, Lotus Notes, and web based email.

But as already posted, SAV Corp is for the CORPORATE enviornment....which any 1/2 way resptecting business would scan email on the inbound mail server....not at the client.

Talk about blowing smoke outta yer ass.... you're prob just a home user of SAV home products.....


RE: Norton bankrupt
By cheetah2k on 2/27/2007 2:55:30 AM , Rating: 2
I use Avast. Great virus scanner, and the home edition is free, but should be registered. Avast takes the least amount of memory of the lot, and has never let me down.

I've also used Mcafee, Vet, SAV, and others in my life time.

The worst memory/cpu hog was Mcafee 8.x (ah what a piece of S*%T - and if you removed it from your computer it still leaves MASSES of registery lines in there - which actually prevented me from installing CA's Vet Antivirus)...

I also trialed the 360 Beta, but i prefer using Symantic's Internet Security to 360. 360 seems to be just more bloatware.


RE: Norton bankrupt
By obeseotron on 2/27/2007 9:43:42 PM , Rating: 2
No one running SAV should be relying on client side email scanning anyway. Email should be scanned on the server before ever making its way to users.


Give It a Damn Rest
By Ard on 2/26/2007 4:25:35 PM , Rating: 3
It surprises me how much everyone rips on Symantec for no good reason. I don't care what anyone says, NIS2007 is excellent, non-intrusive, user-friendly, and has a relatively small footprint. But of course, I'll probably get modded down because I don't blindly hate this company.




RE: Give It a Damn Rest
By glennpratt on 2/26/2007 4:39:08 PM , Rating: 5
I don't blindly hate, nor would I mod you down. I will say in 12 years of working on computers I've had more computers disabled by Norton (most frequently a botched uninstall or corrupted network filter drivers) then I have viruses.

I've seen a computer unable to open Internet Explorer, networking totally dead and unable to reinstall or finish uninstalling Norton.


RE: Give It a Damn Rest
By akugami on 2/26/2007 7:11:31 PM , Rating: 3
I've used various Symantec products. To this day I do not understand why in the name of the seven gods of Hell does the stupid installer not frickin uninstall all of the components that it installs. I have to do like three uninstalls to get rid of most Symantec products.

I've also encountered cases where Symantec was slooooowwwwwiiiinnngggg the computer down. This is unacceptable for a utility that is suppose to secure my system as well as fix any bugs that might be encountered due to various issues. Particularly slowdown from malware.


RE: Give It a Damn Rest
By AlexWade on 2/26/2007 7:41:40 PM , Rating: 3
In the past year, I've had to repair 4 computers damaged by Norton, one this past weekend. The internet wouldn't work. Went into safe mode with networking, internet worked fine. Removed minor spyware which Norton did not detect and prevent, and the internet still didn't work. Removed Norton, everything worked fine.

Once is abnormal, twice is a coincidence, three times or more is a trend.

Plus, it was Norton and McAfee that pitched a hissy fit to get access to the Vista kernel. Hello! If nothing can get into the kernel, then you don't need to scan it. I wish Norton would disappear. Leave security to the experts: AVG, Trend Micro, Avast. All 3 detect more spyware than Norton or McAfee.


RE: Give It a Damn Rest
By InsaneScientist on 2/26/2007 10:30:18 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
Leave security to the experts: AVG, Trend Micro, Avast.


The "Experts" are Eset and Kaspersky. Period.
AVG, Trend Micro, and Avast are all certainly better than Norton and McAfee (the home versions anyway), though.

I agree with the trend thing, though... I can't even count the number of times where I've looked at a client's computer and the problem has actually been Norton. It's well over a dozen in the past year alone. (I see a lot of computers)

Norton's crowning achievement (note the sarcasm), however happened just a couple weeks ago... The guy who owned this computer owned Norton and it was time to upgrade, so he dutifully gets online, plops down his money, downloads the upgrade package and attempts to install it.
It gets through the process, announces he needs to reboot his computer, he does so, the thing comes back up, and nothing worked. Windows had lost the ability to handle the file extention ".exe" Good grief.
Anyone ever had that happen? It's a mess.

Anyhow... once I got that fixed (not a simple task), to be thorough, I decided to pull any junk, that was there, off the system. Amongst an incredible amount of really nasty spyware and some rather persistent adware (I don't know if Norton is supposed to catch those, or just the viruses) I also pulled off 3 different trojans and 1 worm, which Norton definately should have caught.

So all things considered, to the one at the top who said to give it a rest, I'd say that I've got good reason to think that Norton is a piece of crap.


RE: Give It a Damn Rest
By throughhyperspace on 2/27/2007 12:00:53 PM , Rating: 2
Completely agree..

As the manager of a ma and pop type computer shop I cant begin to list all the times I have seen nortons, especially internet security, screw up a system. And each successive release gets more bloated and its failures are more catastrophic.

I tell all my customers to use AVG(1st) or Avast(2nd or for Vista). Much less of a resource hog, detects more and is less likely to get beat, or worse, crippled by a virus. Yes, there are better pay for versions like kaspersky, bitdefender and nod32, but avg and/or avast coupled with adaware, spybot, windows defender and a good firewall like filseclab or sygate(until symantec bought them)are more than enough for most people if you keep up with your scans. And updating windows and java..


Time for a lawsuit!
By SomeYoungMan on 2/26/07, Rating: 0
RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By mark2ft on 2/26/2007 3:15:05 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know about that... Cisco owned the exact name of "iPhone" when it acquired a small company around 2000. It continued selling products that were named "iPhone" and when Apple came out with "iPhone," you could expect Cisco's reaction.

Norton 360 is a far cry from Xbox 360.


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By SpaceRanger on 2/26/2007 3:29:04 PM , Rating: 2
I guess then that Anderson Cooper 360 is in trouble too.. There's one way to shut the man down..


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By FITCamaro on 2/26/2007 3:33:14 PM , Rating: 3
Don't be so sure. Apple is trying to sue anyone using the phrase "Pod" in its products. A hallmark case was the device used to keep track of arcade game machine revenue that has the word "Pod" in its name. Apple claimed it would cause a confusion with the iPod. Because a somewhat bulky black device that attaches to an arcade game machine is extremely similiar to a DRM infested MP3 player.....


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By h0kiez on 2/26/2007 4:13:34 PM , Rating: 2
As are circles...although I think they were around first.


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By cochy on 2/26/2007 4:58:36 PM , Rating: 2
Hmmmm maybe IBM will finally sue Microsoft for knocking off OS/360 then lol


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By carl0ski on 2/26/2007 6:52:28 PM , Rating: 2
i can assure your that won't happen

Companies cannot trade mark numbers
i'm sure you would have noticed that no company markets a product by a number.

Refernece case

Intel vs AMD for usage of the 486 trademark
Intel lost and instead of using 586 for next generation
Pentium was Born AMD was not allowed to use the trademarked term to promote their Intel Compatible CPUs


RE: Time for a lawsuit!
By jtesoro on 2/27/2007 12:06:53 AM , Rating: 2
Car manufacturers use numbers for their models all the time. However, I agree with the limits of trademarking them. And that is why there can both be a Mazda 323 and a BMW 323 at the same time.


Symantec... great company... NOT !!
By kilkennycat on 2/26/2007 3:46:56 PM , Rating: 2
Noticeably neither Partition Magic nor Ghost have been upgraded for Vista. Ghost may be "sometime in the future". No sign of PM being upgraded. And it needs to be upgraded for Vista, since the disc-geometry of the Vista file-system is not at all compatible with any previous MS efforts, and those wishing to partition a disc in a dual-boot XP/Vista environment are in for a rather large shock, if they expect to mix and match different OS partitions as freely as Partition Magic allowed them to do in the past.

The inactivity on Partition Magic is not really surprising, consider Symantec and their history. When Symantec bought Powerquest all the great Powerquest engineers probably promptly left, since Partition Magic is still v8.01, exactly as it left Powerquest. Ghost10 is just a minor update and repackaging of Powerquest Drive Image 7. Symantec seems to specialize in acquisitions, then milking the acquisition dry and effectively discarding it.




RE: Symantec... great company... NOT !!
By GreenEnvt on 2/26/2007 4:29:22 PM , Rating: 2
Vista (non-home editions anyway) has a built in partition manager that can resize partitions on the fly. I installed Vista Business on my laptop, then used the built in app to split off 20 gigs(out of 120 total) for my XP partition. Worked like a charm. I then rebooted and installed XP on that partition as normal.


By kdog03 on 2/26/2007 4:45:27 PM , Rating: 2
You know what. I have used mcaffee and others but syamantec Norton is good and I enjoy their newer releases. I just dont want to keep paying the fee once a year-it should be $10 at best for this stuff. It's Overlly priced but good product.


By Griswold on 2/26/2007 4:50:24 PM , Rating: 2
This tool finds it limits when you try to merge two partitions and one is the system partition - it'll end up as a dynamic drive. At least that is what (almost) happened to me. Luckily, Vista warned me about this not so minor detail before I executed it.


RE: Symantec... great company... NOT !!
By Griswold on 2/26/2007 4:53:52 PM , Rating: 2
Give Acronis' TrueImage 10 and DiskDirector 10 a spin. Been using these for a little over a year now, and they're better than Ghost and PM. TI 10 also works under Vista and the DiskDirector I only use via the boot-CD anyway (used it to resize the partitions on my primary disk before installing vista).


By hubajube on 2/26/2007 6:33:19 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Give Acronis' TrueImage 10 and DiskDirector 10 a spin.
There you go!!! Excellent products.


By Zelvek on 2/27/2007 12:29:17 AM , Rating: 2
wonder when symantec will try buying them that will be a dark day.


Symantec sucks
By thebrown13 on 2/26/2007 3:07:54 PM , Rating: 3
Their software is annoying, bug-prone, ugly, user-unfriendly, and expensive.

Next.




RE: Symantec sucks
By Vertigo101 on 2/26/2007 3:28:02 PM , Rating: 2
No, that's just their consumer software.

Give Symantec Corporate Antivirus a spin....I think you'll be plesantly surprised.


RE: Symantec sucks
By semo on 2/26/2007 4:32:26 PM , Rating: 3
nod32 has already pleasantly surprised me. i think it's a pretty lousy practice to offer a version of software that is inferior, ostensibly, for purposes of differentiation.


RE: Symantec sucks
By hubajube on 2/26/2007 6:34:23 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Give Symantec Corporate Antivirus a spin....I think you'll be plesantly surprised.
Next.


So many anti-norton'ers here.....
By solgae1784 on 2/26/2007 5:59:18 PM , Rating: 2
Wow....just wow. So many anti-norton posters here. Can't we just chill for a moment and actually TEST the software before you start making judgments?

OK, I agree that Symantec has a bad track record with their security software - even I admit it. But that doesn't mean they'll never learn. Like the above poster said, I found NIS2007 to be quite light on resources (if not on the disk space) and does the job quite well and easy, and it has an antispyware that is being received quite well by the reviewers.

I'd say reserve your judgment on ANY software (Yes, even Mcafee in that regard) until you properly test out the software. Yes, there are bad companies, (Mcafee and AOL, I'm looking at you) but you may be surprised how some companies DO listen to their customers and do their best working on it. They don't want to lose customers, after all.




RE: So many anti-norton'ers here.....
By murray13 on 2/26/2007 7:45:05 PM , Rating: 2
Too late!

They lost me as a customer a number of years ago. Trying to uninstall their software is harder than removing Internet Explorer! Customer support just said, oh well, sucks to be you, and offered no help. If a company is confident in their product they have no problem letting the small number of people who don't like it to remove it easily and make sure that their leaving does not make a bad impression, they might be back. Obviously Symantic over the years does not have that kind of corporate vision.

They lost me as a customer, and as one who recommended them, a long time ago. IF this 360 is different and better, I won't find out on my own. The web will have to completly praise this in reviews and say it's the best thing since sliced bread.

Yes, I won't judge this piece of software, but I will still judge the company, based on the past.


By kmmatney on 2/26/2007 9:22:13 PM , Rating: 2
I know an IT guy who is an expert in uninstalling Norton, especially corporate editions that can easily get botched or blocked from uninstalling. He makes a ton of money from this specialty.


By Zelvek on 2/27/2007 12:42:33 AM , Rating: 1
I also found NIS2007 in some cases to be quite light on resources so much so that it reduced the amount of resources windows was using. How did they do this you ask? simple they stooped the F***in PC from booting when the piece of shit bloatware crashed mid-install! Well at least I have received extra business from people suffering from such errors thx symantec!


360 = Systemworks
By Flunk on 2/26/2007 3:35:00 PM , Rating: 2
I think the title of this article should be Norton renames Norton SystemWorks to Norton 360. It's exactly the same list of features. This is an obvious marketing ploy.

I guess we can hope they completely reworked it to be efficient, unobtrutisive and easy to use. Maybe that's a too much to hope for.




RE: 360 = Systemworks
By INeedCache on 2/26/2007 5:40:23 PM , Rating: 2
Instead of Systemworks, they should have called it "Stopthesystemfromworking", because more often than not, that's what happened with this bloated, intrusive, overwrought software. Maybe 2007 is better, as I cannot comment on that since I haven't used it or worked on a mchine crippled by it. By Symantec's previous consumer offerings were horrific. The silver lining was, my company made lots of money fixing machines messed up by Symantec.


RE: 360 = Systemworks
By Chernobyl68 on 2/26/2007 7:41:04 PM , Rating: 2
it looks to me like they're simply combining 2 products into one. I'm still waiting for the dang anti spam they dropped from 2007...


New Tagline From Symantec:
By zsouthboy on 2/26/2007 3:31:04 PM , Rating: 5
Norton 360 - Now our software sucks all around!




Irony
By mechBgon on 2/26/2007 3:20:11 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
Interestingly, Symantec CEO John Thompson said earlier this month that he hadn’t installed Windows Vista and that he saw no need for it for what he does online, adding that Symantec has not yet made a commitment to migrate to Vista.
Ironic, considering that Symantec's own security researchers found that Vista, out of the box, breaks over 90% of the ~2000 samples of Windows malware they tried on it.
quote:
Out of the seventy percent that were able to execute, only about six percent of the samples were able to accomplish a full compromise and an even smaller number (four percent) were able to survive a reboot. The rest did not execute properly due to incompatibility, unhandled exceptions, or security restrictions.
from http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_respon...

Possible case of the proverbial sour grapes here...?




Norton 360
By NoNoBadDog on 2/26/2007 11:57:54 PM , Rating: 2
I hear a lot of people complain about Norton products. I can say one thing about them; any computer that I service that has Norton Internet Security installed on it does not have any malware.
On computers using any other software, such as Avast, AVG, McAfee, or the absolutely worthless Windows Live! OneCare, chances are very good that there is malware on them.

Say what you will, but on a healthy system, Norton products protect them better than any other product.




RE: Norton 360
By Zelvek on 2/27/2007 12:53:31 AM , Rating: 2
I find it strange then that I and many fellow tech friends have found plenty of malware on Norton "protected" systems.


360
By hubajube on 2/26/2007 6:26:05 PM , Rating: 3
It's appropriately named. Now they can f&%k themselves.




Took a while
By Omega215D on 2/26/2007 8:38:20 PM , Rating: 3
I have been using BitDefender Internet Security 10 and it came with all those features along with Parental Control except with BitDefender I get 2 years of protection, a better virus scanner and firewall and above all Windows Vista compatibility. I'm hesitant to believe CNET on its rating on this one.




Thanks
By oTAL (blog) on 2/26/2007 3:25:42 PM , Rating: 2
That article was pretty useful since people tend to ask me for advice. Now I know the name of the new software to advice everyone NOT to buy...

Still, I'll wait for the reviews to make my final judgment. Nevertheless, I'd VERY surprised it it was good enough to be bad.

I used to like their system utilities though... pretty good maintenance stuff. Switched to Iolo System Mechanic eventually and I've been pretty happy with it.




I'm confused...
By ultimatebob on 2/26/2007 3:34:58 PM , Rating: 2
Can someone explain to me how this software bundle is different than the Norton SystemWorks bundles that Symantec as been selling for nearly a decade?




Stupid product name
By UNCjigga on 2/26/2007 5:14:31 PM , Rating: 2
Wait, I'm confused...is this a software product or a nightly newsblog feature on CNN featuring a gay, silver-haired anchor?




confusion and morons
By ElJefe69 on 2/27/2007 3:20:33 PM , Rating: 2
People on here are confusing the corporate version of symantec with the home user, single pc versions.

the corporate version is EXCELLENT. it unfortunately has NOTHING to do with the home version.

the home version is terrible to say the least. Resource hog, the downloader gets corrupted and dies, cant be uninstalled without special tools (if that even works), never is silenced, bloats every issue and has a ton of norton only specific worms and viruses that make windows look secure.




By Hawkido on 3/1/2007 5:43:54 PM , Rating: 2
There are a lot of good complaints about Norton listed here:
1. Bloat - Yup It's got a nasty foot print. I hate it.
2. Uninstall - True enough, but alot of those components are modular because the support different families of products such as firewall, SAV, SAV for Exchange, ETC.. If it pulled all the support programs off just because you uninstalled the firewall that would really suck.

And some I have no experience with:
1. Crashing - I haven't had any experience with this. Could someone give a non rabid explanation about when where there was a crash? Were you mixing Symantec and McAfee products, if so it is documented in McAfee readme that all symantec products must be removed before you can install McAfee. I think they design it that way. Symantec is like the Tylenol of the AV community. Least likely to cause a reaction. That is why the Military uses it. The bloat you can live with, the eratic behavior of an AV program that shares it's files with the system files or replaces them for "Security" purposes is not tolerable. One aspect of security is system maintainability. If you don't need a malicious hacker to take your system down, then your system is not secure.




...
By crazydrummer4562 on 3/4/2007 1:29:24 PM , Rating: 2
Kaspersky>Norton




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