Symantec Norton 360

In recent months many system-maintenance and tweaking tools have added security features like antivirus scanning and spyware shields to the defragmenters and Registry cleaners already in the mix. Now, one of the security heavyweights is biting back with a staggeringly comprehensive all-in-one suite that covers malware threats, identity theft, backup, and system optimization. Norton 360 substantially updates and bundles elements from products like Norton Security into one of the more effective and well-tuned offerings in the security category.
 
The top-drawer malware protection is here in bidirectional firewall-, spyware-, virus-, and rootkit detection/removal. The transaction-security piece is supplied by a browser add-on that scans Web pages for telltale signs of phishing and doesn't rely solely on running URLs against a "black list" of known scams.
 
The approach used in this Norton version is set-and-forget functionality. Advanced users will need to drill down three or four levels into the user-friendly interface to find the granular settings that used to be on the surface of most security programs. Most users will be happy to relinquish control to let Norton determine the best settings. We were impressed by how unobtrusive the program was in terms of performance and warnings. The scans occurred in the background almost invisibly, and the firewall and virus protection did not set off warning pop-ups at every turn.
 
In the past, most Norton products have been notorious for hogging resources and dragging down performance, but the 360 suite is easily the best-behaved Norton product we have ever installed. The one technical difficulty we experienced involved the anti-phishing device, which never installed properly on our IE7 browser. It is intended to warn against potentially fraudulent sites and verify the validity of major e-commerce brands, so you can be confident that you are in fact logging into eBay or Amazon. Perhaps because of an earlier installation of other Norton products on our test machine, the toolbar never activated in IE for us. The simple Fix button in the status-warning screen failed to do anything, either.
 
As for the added backup and tuneup features, we were as impressed on this front as we were with Norton's handling of security. The Backup and Restore feature gives you granular control over which files on your system get backed up to which destination (disc, drive, online) and when. We set it up, and early on Sunday morning the backup spit out a DVD disc while we slept. Norton includes 2GB of online storage space for autobackups, which is enough space for documents. Expect to add more space if you plan to store images and music online. Our e-mail alone filled up the free 2GB. We liked that we could log into the secure online storage with the same e-mail and password we use to access our Norton account.
 
The Tuneup feature cleans system temp files and Internet history and temp files, and it also runs disk defragmentation on a set schedule. We found this feature, like the rest of this suite, to run well and unobtrusively. Even the defragmenter let us work at acceptable speeds as it ran in the background.
 
The one weakness in Norton 360 for intermediate and advanced users is lack of detail and control closer to the surface. When running the disk defragmenter, for instance, you can't even get a sense of its progress. Setting exceptions in the firewall requires some amount of drilling through Windows. We also wish there were more features aimed at notebook users, like network management and notifications about potential wireless bandwidth vagabonds.
 
To its credit, however, Norton has overhauled its interface and noticeably tweaked performance. Control freaks and PC fanatics may want greater transparency in their security and optimization programs, but we like having a reliable all-in-one solution that doesn't bug us every few moments and that helps us eliminate a few of those defragmenters and backup programs that clutter our taskbar. Norton 360 is an all-around winner.

 

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Because you can't sit next to their PCs 24/7.