Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2006 (Full Product)

Symantec Norton Antivirus 2006

Norton AntiVirus 2006 (Full Product) Review, by Tony Bradley January 26, 2006

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• Latest User Reviews 6 reviews
• Reviewed by: snowdog59

  Duration of ownership: 1 Year

  Strengths: Can't think of any to speak of.

  Weaknesses: Difficult installation and memory hog. Have had to reinstall several times beacause of corrupted files.

  Overall: I can't think of any reason to put this product on your machine. Norton AV 2006 has been nothing but trouble since I installed a year ago. After my latest problem though, Symantec automatically upgraded me to 2007. I will say that my machine has performed much better since being upgraded, machine works much faster and use of RAM has improved significantly. Stay away from 2006 though.

• Reviewed by: Quasar66

  Duration of ownership: 2 Years

  Strengths: Was good while it worked (not very long)

  Weaknesses: The extensive product failures, the non-responsive support

  Overall: I owned Norton 2005 Edition - and that was due for renewal on Oct 2 2006. However, September 2006, it just collapsed, causing immediate infection and significant loss of the drive content. After about a month, spending some time recovering some data, I purchased the 2006 Edition - in a CD format. This installation had no problems till Dec 31st 2006. First week of Jan, the SW stopped appearing in the start up sequence, and try as one would, after umpteen re-installations (which is not easy, please, as after every re-installation, it downloads approx 30 MB of data from Internet, then does a complete scan of the system - my system has 360K files, hence takes about four hours including downloads) the system still would stop working the next morning. The scans show absolutely no viruses or spyware etc. in spite of a clearly visible entry in the startup.ini in msconfig with no name or other details - obviously a malware. But the SW installation crashes the next instance the machine is exposed to Internet. Another word of caution for innocent users - the SW tends to disable the Windows firewall, taking over the firewall responsibility on itself - without permission from user - and then itself collapses, thus keeping the PC exposed to the Internet attacks. The support system is highly non-responsive, as the chat system and their automatic testing tool SW refused to get installed (Windows XP SP2 system on Compaq PC based on Intel P4 system). The email response was very cute - "re-install and see". Subsequent attempts to secure mail based advise failed to elicit any response. Definitely not for recommended for ordinary people dependent on PC for their regular business.

• Reviewed by: garyrohr

  Duration of ownership: 2 Months

  Strengths: When it works it is an excellent product

  Weaknesses: Product activation issues can cause the product to quit working as happened to me and Symantec will do nothing to resolve the issue other than to tell you to buy another license

  Overall: I guess Symantec started using their now infamous activation procedure back in 2004 but I was unaware of it and continued to us my 2003 version until adware got to be such an issue that I decided to upgrade to Systemworks 2006. I spent $70 for what I thought was a top of the line product. It installed cleanly and activated fine. During the first month it asked me to re-activate a few times. Then I replaced my motherboard and processor and every time I rebooted it asked me to re-activate. After just a few more reboots it told me I had activated the product too many times as if I had a choice in the matter. Symantec support was no help either saying I'd activated the product too many times and I'd have to buy a new license - as if that will ever happen. I switched from McAfee to Symantec back in 2002 - looks like I'll be going back to them once again. I strongly urge everyone to avoid this product as I believe I would have had this problem even if I had never upgraded my motherboard and processor - it would hjave just taken a little longer as evidenced by other reviews I've read since this happened to me. Be warned.....

• Reviewed by: tr1gger

  Duration of ownership: 3 Years

  Strengths: none

  Weaknesses: customer support and the product

  Overall: customer services are an the wrong side of next to useless. does not find any viruses that de-active it even after re-activation and update , slow in checking , hog system resources , don't buy it , There are better free products out there

• Reviewed by: walid

  Duration of ownership: 3 Years

  Strengths: fast scan detect many viruses &spywares and block them

  Weaknesses: poor shap and design bad shape of messeges bad background of option of firewall and no messeeges of pinging

• Reviewed by: garhawk

  Duration of ownership: 5 Years

  Strengths: Easy installation/activation. Ease of navigation and use.

  Weaknesses: Slow scanning. Didn't tell me that my product was out of date until they took my money for annual subcription.

  Overall: I've used this product for quite a few years. I always thought it was a good product until I read the other reviews. I haven't had any problems w/installation or anything else. It does a heck of a job scanning and keeping my files safe. Luckily, I've never had to use tech support.

• Reviewed by: jamesliz

  Strengths: Does filter viruses

  Weaknesses: Noticable slows down computer. Was faw in install program causing it to lock up computer on update process. If you're not experienced computer user would not be able to install product.

  Overall: There are better products out there. It would be nice if software manufacturers, especially Symantac, would just make products that would install smoothly. Hard to find such products these days.

• Reviewed by: rlwelburn

  Strengths: okay taking care of viruses

  Weaknesses: wouldn't pay rebate, bad customer service, program interferes with anything I'm doing

  Overall: bad rebate record. they say they didn't receive part or all of the submission. check www.rebatereportcard.com. It's near impossible to get a live person on the phone. As for the program, when it starts scanning my computer slows to a crawl.

• Reviewed by: birdie2

  Strengths: Delivered as advertised

  Weaknesses: none

  Overall: I am pleased with the purchase. Received delivery notice and item as advertised. Good packaging. I can't find fifteen more words to say. Here are four more words. And one more word

• Reviewed by: online_buyer_since_1996

  Strengths: It kept viruses away like other anti-virus software.

  Weaknesses: Slows the PC big time. Known RESOURCE drainage problems.

  Overall: For some strange reason, Norton decided to commit professional suicide by making its historically best sold product a resource hog in 2006. My relatively new Centrino laptop with 756 MB RAM drasticaly slowed down after installing 2006. For a while I was not aware why it was so. Eventually, Google searches revealed the NAV 2006 to be the source. After UN-installing NAV 2006 , the PC immediately gained its previous speed. I never though getting rid of a premium AV product would make me happy. Now, I am using critically acclaimed and "free" AVG anti-virus with its minimal resource usage. Intererestingly, I had been using NAV since 2000 and all older versions of Norton AV used to be great products. It is said that NAV 2007 will not have the same problems since Norton decided to listen to its customers. Nevertheless, I won't get to try it. Also, you will need to go to Norton website and download and run Norton's removal tool if you are installing this over the older versions of the NAV. Otherwise, NAV has this bad habit of not wanting to get out of your PC, even after the uninstall. I am now glad MS will no longer provide Kernel access to Symantec.

• Reviewed by: hockeyman001

  Strengths: Virus scanning capability similar to previous versions of Norton.

  Weaknesses: Intrusive, difficult interface, addition of excessive (and potentially redundant) system processes, loss of RAM due to background activity, unpredictable behavior, CPU performance inhibition

  Overall: horrendous. the ONLY thing i wanted was antivirus SCANNING and PROTECTION. akin to the mcafee v-shield, norton autoprotect from my previous norton AV version, 2004, was fine...onintrusive and efficient, popping up only when a threat had been detected or to notify me when and why an internet script had been blocked.but this new "norton protection center" is the worst thing known to man. it forces you to DL all the windows updates - even if you uncheck the windows update component, it still attempts this every startup (unless you CTRL + ALT + DEL, task manager, processes, and end the process wuauclt.exe :) that's good lookin out ppl, trust me). it insists on running the protection center and a bunch of system processes that CANNOT be "ended," and there is no option to disable protection center. it schedules automatic scans at inopportune times, drags down memory and RAM, and is overall negative.i used to get by with four programs to fix EVERYTHING that could ever go wrong on my computer... jay loden's aimfix, webroot spysweeper, norton AV 2004, and registry mechanic. norton is attempting to do all of these in one, which would be nice if actually accomplished, but not at the expense of 90-95% of my processor's capability.one of the best things about AutoUpdate was the ability to make it ManualUpdate and do it whenever. Despite turning it off, stuff still gets downloaded on my comp all the time WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.Thumbs down, 1/5 on this product