In the past, I gave this product decent marks. Norton has a wonderful firewall, and I like the easy virus updates. It's pretty easy to install, and personally, on my own computer, I haven't really had a bad experience with Norton products on my own machine, which I try to keep updated with the necessary viral updates, upgrades and patches.

But, I've also seen Norton at work on other computers I've encountered. A relative of mine contacted me one day to tell me their computer wasn't working as it was supposed to, and asked me to take a look at it, which I did. The computer had one of the worst infections I've ever seen. It had over 100 viruses and malware weighing down the operating system. Completely mind boggling.

The thing was, this relative had recently upgraded their Norton Internet Security by buying a two year license for their machine, so it should have been fine.  To be honest, the relative isn't computer savvy, but even if they had downloaded a file, by mistake to their machine which ended up giving them a virus, there should have been some pop up or warning to alert them that the file they were downloading had a virus in it. The program is supposed to do that much. Instead, Norton was hijacked by the viruses. It kept me from executing and using the free, third party packages I needed to remove the viruses off the machine. It would alert each virus removal tool as a "virus" then quickly delete it.

It literally took one day of my life to get the computer working again normally, and nearly four days (over a two week time span) to get the machine clean. This took multiple scans. Luckily, I did not need to do a clean restore.

I rate Norton as "okay", only because in my own experience, this package is okay, but after seeing what happened to this relative's machine, I'm on the fence about Norton.
In the past, I gave this product decent marks. Norton has a wonderful firewall, and I like the easy virus updates. It's pretty easy to install, and personally, on my own computer, I haven't really had a bad experience with Norton products on my own machine, which I try to keep updated with the necessary viral updates, upgrades and patches. But, I've also seen Norton at work on other computers I've encountered. A relative of mine contacted me one day to tell me their computer wasn't working as it was supposed to, and asked me to take a look at it, which I did. The computer had one of the worst infections I've ever seen. It had over 100 viruses and malware weighing down the operating system. Completely mind boggling. The thing was, this relative had recently upgraded their Norton Internet Security by buying a two year license for their machine, so it should have been fine. To be honest, the relative isn't computer savvy, but even if they had downloaded a file, by mistake to their machine which ended up giving them a virus, there should have been some pop up or warning to alert them that the file they were downloading had a virus in it. The program is supposed to do that much. Instead, Norton was hijacked by the viruses. It kept me from executing and using the free, third party packages I needed to remove the viruses off the machine. It would alert each virus removal tool as a "virus" then quickly delete it. It literally took one day of my life to get the computer working again normally, and nearly four days (over a two week time span) to get the machine clean. This took multiple scans. Luckily, I did not need to do a clean restore. I rate Norton as "okay", only because in my own experience, this package is okay, but after seeing what happened to this relative's machine, I'm on the fence about Norton.