Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)It appears that Symantec has been resting on their laurels.
This is their flagship consumer application, and comes bundled with a modestly improved antivirus (new network and wireless intrusion-detection features). Ghost has been replaced by Save and Restore, and you get the extras, Passmark 6.1 and SmithMicro's CheckIt 7. GoBack is still there, but not installed by default.
It sports a new interface, with a DHTML menu-like slider with scrollbars in each section that took a bit to find what I was looking for. It has an option for a "classic" inteface - but it made me think of HTML 1.0 "classic".
This was a clean install on a clean install of XP SP2.
The install went much smoother than the 2006 version of the same product which I won't cover here. I'll just say it went much smoother.
The plusses: Bundled with some somewhat useful third party (Passmark, SmithMicro) tools.
I liked Save and Restore - which would save and restore to/from any drive - network, internal or external, and Save and Restore is versatile in that you can also specify folders, or the entire drive. Save and Restore could also be scheduled/configured in dozens of ways.
The antivirus (manual scan) was blazingly fast and the new ability of NAV to monitor and interact with my home/SOHO/Wireless network was a positive development.
Passmark (6.1, rebranded Symantec), is a good tool for benchmarking, and comparing my system to others (download free user-generated comparatives at the Passmark site). I learned that my X2 3800/Ati XT1600 (2 Ghz) is 38% slower than a 2.8 Extreme iMac with XP in Boot Camp, and 290% slower than a QX6800 with 7950GT (I didn't compare them all, several thousand to compare to!).
Mostly minuses: I tried to update system drivers - bluescreen city began. A reboot from a bluescreen was usually be followed by a prompt to run one or another function I had scheduled (Save and Restore, virus scan, defrag) - leading me to believe that the scheduler has some conflicts with my AMD machine (ATI/AMD) and the drivers (7.10 - 7.12). The dump error code was useless on both MS and Google to figure out.
I was unable to use System Restore (Microsoft's built-in tool) at all after installing it - it still ran and catalogued checkpoints, but would not roll them back, even after disabling NAV and SystemWorks protection.
Defrag, when it worked - usually took 2-3 passes to defrag. It frequently just froze.
Norton process viewer (with the "google this" feature that I loved) wouldn't auto-update with active processes - whatever was running when I opened the Norton process viewer was it. If I launched Acrobat, and wanted to see what modules where in use, I had to relaunch it. Bizarro!
One Button Checkup (Windoctor, registry section) decided that the BUNDLED CheckIt (third party) tool was all ganked up, and wanted to repair about 20 entries related to it.
The antivirus, even improved, still only "actively scans" inbound and outbound ports 25/110. No IMAP. No secure SMTP/POP (required by certain ISP's now). This doesn't affect send and receive other than the packet stream isn't scanned to/from. Even the free Avast! AV offers multiport/multiprotocol options. Sad.
SmithMicro's CheckIt 7 (bundled) decided that my 939 (K8) CPU was a K7 - the 2006 version got it right tho, what gives?
Regardless, I had a very unstable system, so as a last resort, I tried the Symantec "uninstall tool" - but traces were still left behind, BSOD city. I ended up doing a OEM wipe disk, and clean reinstall of the system. All is well again.
One feature I didn't try was the bult in "paid technician remote login". It just seemed kinda sick - paying Symantec to fix what Symantec seemingly broke.
I do accept the responsibility of reading the reviews (mostly negative) and plunging in anyhow, thinking back on the good old days when SystemWorks, well, worked very well!
Bottom line: This is more of a train wreck than a mashup of useful tools.
Your milage may vary - but I'd recommend steering clear of Norton "anything" until they come out of the 90s regarding the Internet and system usability/flexibility.
It needs a clean disable (or pass through for signed system and/or critical updates).
The feature it needs the most is a 100% "One-Button Checkout" (uninstall)
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