Norton 360 2013 - 1 User / 3 PC [Download]

The least you have to know: Norton 360 is an adequate anti-malware suite with some foibles. With low processing and memory overhead, you will enjoy an unobtrusive experience. The issues I've seen come from some of the added applications in the suite, most of them useless.

Here's the full story: I have just finished a year with Kaspersky and I have never been happier with security suite. The overhead was low, the anti-advertisement engine built in made it so I wasn't bothered by annoying in-page video ads and so on. I awalys knew what was happening with Kaspersky, know what tasks were running and when, etc. With this in mind, whatever security suite I would get had to meet a pretty high standard.

The story was good out of the gate: Norton 360 installed without a problem and in fact did not require a restart! The installation didn't take long and before long, I was using it without issue. The overhead is also very low, my task manager showed a memory average use of less than 40MB, which is pretty impressive considering just what it's doing.

The firewall settings picked up all the software I was using regularly and did not prompt me for allowances or denials, it just set them up appropriately. I know because I looked. Which is another thing I do like about Norton 360, the ease with which I was able to find and manage the various applications, each of which comes with a help link that points to a web page.
The main application page has four sections, Security, Identity, Backup, and Tuneup. The security section is what you've come to expect: anti-spam, anti-malware of all sorts, and the firewall. Identity deals with detecting fraudulent web sites, etc. something I've not found to be entirely that useful. At my job, where I am a systems administrator, the problem always seems to be with visiting "dangerous" sites. There are a few "good sites" here and there that can be malicious--and almost always, it's an malicious advertisement served remotely--but I have not found them to be rampant. Backup is useless to me personally as I already have access to and use Dropbox, Skydrive, etc. The tuneup is a throwback to the days when Norton Utilities ruled the Windows roost. I found these, even back then when you could purchase them as a standalone package, to be of doubtful advantage. It is supposed to keep your registry and other Windows components running in good shape.

One thing you will quickly be annoyed by are the pop-ups that show up at the top-right of the screen announcing (by taking away focus) that such and such an application is taking up too much memory or disk use. I can see how this can be useful--not to the systems adminstrator--but definitely across the board. If only it weren't so in-your-face.
Promising good support, I found I had to take Symantec up on their offer a few days into using Norton 360. I found the chat support very fast. In no time at all, I was talking to "Michael Angelo" who sent me a link to download a LogMeIn application that gave him access to my system. So what was the problem? Well, working along one day, a huge pop up window informed me that "something" had gone wrong with a 3036 error number--or something like that. I next discovered that the SONAR had stopped working. I restarted the computer and a few minutes in, the same error occurred. The help link said to download a utility called the Norton Power Eraser which is supposed to clean out any possible issues with rootkits. Well then! The page didn't let on what exactly I'd run into, just to download the utility. Strange.

I did and rebooted. No dice, the error came back. On the chat, I told Michael Angelo was the problem was as he got on remotely, but he didn't seem to listen. After seeing the issue, I asked him what he thought. He said he was about to uninstall then reinstall Norton 360. After I informed him that was something I could handle rather easily, but that I wanted to know *why* the error existed. He didn't answer so I thanked him, logged off the support session and re-installed Norton 360. I'm now keeping a watchful eye out for a recurrence.
My biggest issue with Norton 360 is that it does nothing to curb advertisements on web pages. I really liked this feature of Kaspersky and the fact that a lot of malware makes its way onto machines through fraudulent ads is kind of a let-down.

In all, adequate for most purposes, but not stellar by any means. 3 stars.

I am working toward my master's degree in cybersecurity. In doing so, I quickly became aware of how vulnerable most of us are. I have always had antivirus protection, but I realized what I had was not enough. Norton 360 2013 fills many of the gaps that previously existed in my defenses. Norton 360 213 protects you from:

*All types of viruses and spyware
*Online identity theft when you bank or shop
*Bad files and websites when you browse and share
*Phishing scams
*Theft of your personal information
*Hard-to-remove infections
*Spyware
*Spam
*Social network threats when you socialize
*Loss of files due to a hard drive crash or other mishap
*Slow PC performance

When you browse the Internet, Norton will tell you which sites are safe and which are not. For example, if you Google something, let's say General Petraeus, since he is in the news as I write this, when the list of results come up you will see a little green box with an "ok" in it. If you mouse over this green box you will see a report about the website. Here you will see a summary. It might say something like, "Site is safe." Great! You can look down at a list of specific factors:

* computer threats
* identity threats
* annoyance factors
* ecommerce safety threats

It will also tell you the status of the sites transaction protection and privacy protection, and if relevant, whether the site is a legitimate business. And if this does not satisfy you, you can click on a box to get a full report.

This may seem like more trouble than it is worth to some people, but believe me, it is worth knowing in advance about the site. There are all too many traps on the Internet for the unwary and the unwary WILL pay for their lack of caution.

I have heard that some people find Norton 360 too intrusive.I have not found that to be the case. It runs in the background and it does not noticeably affect my computer's performance.

Norton 360 2013 gives you control over many settings, so if you want to customize your security settings, you can easily do this. If you go into your control panel you will see four boxes:

* security
* identity
* backup
* tuneup

If, for example, you click on security, you will see several options:

* view details
* run scans
* run live update (this will tell you, for example, that your definitions were updated 6 seconds ago)
* manage firewall
* run Norton Insight

Norton Insight is a nifty little program that speeds up your scans by determining, as they put it, "a trust level for the files that belong to well-known applications." Trusted applications are excluded from security scans. With Norton 360 2013, many things take place in the background while your computer is idle. For example, with regards to Insight, "The processes that are related to Norton Insight run when your computer is idle. This way, the system performance remains high while you perform tasks on your computer."

Under your firewall settings, you can set program rules, traffic rules (or block traffic altogether). You can go into the details of events monitoring as well. As Norton points out, "Intruders can gain access to your computer in the following ways without causing firewall alerts to appear:

*Launching and manipulating safe programs without your knowledge
*Attaching to a safe program without getting detected
*Launching trusted applications in hidden mode through command-line parameters
*Injecting code into other applications' processes
*Modifying the URL of an Internet browser through Windows messages
*Bypassing firewall inspections by penetrating the Windows TCP/IP layer to send and receive data
*Using the documented interfaces that Windows Active Desktop provides to transmit data outside the network
*Using keylogger programs to monitor the keystrokes of a computer user, thereby gaining access to a user's personal information
*Instantiating controlled COM objects to manipulate an application's behavior

So as you can see, you can take as much responsibility for the nitty gritty as you desire, or simply allow Norton 360 to do its thing as unobtrusively as possible (and I personally find it pretty unobtrusive).

I am very happy with Norton 360 2013. I am not a IT person; my degrees were in history and philosophy, so this is a change for me. Many of the technical aspects of the subject remain unfamiliar to me. But based on what I do know, Norton is a sound method of protecting your pc and your home network, if you have one.

As others have noted, Norton 360 2013 installs easily. There were no hiccups and it took no time at all. Being able to tune up your PC's performance and clean your registry is a nice bonus.

The interface is great - easy on the eyes, easy to follow. And Amazon.com's $50 price tag makes it painlessly affordable. Believe me, you do not want to go out there (or here) without protection. I am aware of reviews that say Norton 360 does not block all Malware, but there is no antivirus program out there that will protect you against absolutely everything. People need to be aware of that fact up front. 100% protection is an impossibility and the intruder will always have the advantage in that antivirus protection must always be playing catch-up.

But with Norton you will not have to remember to update your definitions. They will be kept updated for you, and that is an important part of the battle. As a final note, PCMag made Norton 360 2013 its Editors' Choice for "mega-suite." Get it, and protect yourself.

Always remember to buy "new" instead of "renew" with Norton, as it is ALWAYS cheaper. Works as expected. Does not hog system resources as previous versions did.