bit-tech Shopping: Symantec Norton Internet Security 2007

• Microsoft Windows Vista Business
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64

Rating: 4

Time with product: 30 Days

Strengths: Very complete virus, spam, Internet, etc. protection

Weaknesses: Probably too much. It consumes large amounts of CPU at times, and I often see my hard drive turning for an hour or more. I don't know what it's doing, but it takes a lot of resources.

Summary: Better have at least an Intel 3000 series CPU or better and 1 GB RAM minimum. Shut it off if you do video editing or any other resource intensive process.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 3 Months

Strengths: "Norton Internet Security" seems to be the best security "suite" for retail customers. Intuitive. Has a "best" firewall, in addition to their "on-top-of-it" virus program. If you're using Windows XP,

Weaknesses: It is a space hog, so if your computer is already running slowly, consider an anti-virus rather than a suite. Before installing, first remove any and all previous Norton products by using Norton's rem

Summary: As a suite, this is the premier. Much better than McAfee has yet produced. If you want individual programs, rather than a suite, there are many other good products, most of them free, for home or small-business computers.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 45 Days

Strengths: Virus, spam, and spyware intervention seem to work great.

Weaknesses: Poor integration of parental controls

Summary: For 2007, the parental controls are an add-in application that you have to down load off their website. This was the main reason for buying this version. Should have been integrated as in past versions.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 10 Days

Strengths: Contains fraud monitoring. Seem to run quicker. Allows full scan to run in the background using less memory.

Weaknesses: I no longer have "this is spam" button with my MS Outlook.

Summary: Norton's has changed the layout of the setup menu. Seems to run quicker. Allows full scan to run in the background using less memory. Nortons Internet Security is a stable and good product and comes from an established company. Many manufactures may have a better product at a given point in time, but NIS will always be a good stable software package.

Rating: 4

Time with product: 10

Strengths: proven security for many years

Weaknesses: no longer user accounts that would allow different configuration of parental control for different users of the computer. Also, slows down computer and constantly interrupts with updates etc.

Summary: After installing NIS 2007 I realized that there was no parental control. With some difficulty I discovered on the Norton website an add-on download for parental control. In trying to configure it I was most disappointed to realize that you cannot configure parental control for different users (only one setting for all users of the computer). Technical support confirmed that NIS 2007 has no longer the option of different user accounts, a feature that was present in all NIS up to 2006. So you have to turn off parental control when an adult uses the computer and turn it off when the adult logs off so that children can use the computer. Turning on and off required password controlled access. Another time consuming and disrupting feature of NIS. Very disappointing!