Review by Robert D. Harmon

I’ve been using Norton/Symantec products for over 10 years now, and am familiar with their characteristics and how they’ve evolved.

This product comes boxed, with an instruction card (with product code) and CD. I installed on 3 PCs, 2 of them Windows Vista, and one PC a Windows 7 platform. It installed smoothly in all caes.

It also installed the latest Norton toolbar, including Vault which can be helpful as a way of bringing up password-protected sites, and this latest Norton imported my passwords intact (including the password to open Vault). These days, when you need different (and un-memorizable) passwords for every site, this function is more important than ever. This latest version of Vault is more user-friendly and intuitive.

You can load from the CD or online from Norton. One oddity if you download online: in Windows it doesnt automatically load to the usual Download file, at least not in Vista. I had to specify a folder. Ive loaded from the CD and it seemed easier, at least in Vista.

Some features I haven’t seen before:n1. Option to install from the furnished CD or to go to Norton online and enter the product code. If the latter, be advised it takes some time to download even with DSL. Once I had done so, it finished and installed with no problem and no apparent need for updates that day. It helps if you already have a Norton account but you can set one up.n2. The CD can serve as a recovery disk. You will need to set your computer to boot from disc, before the need arises.n3. After installation, Norton online support came up with this: I want to download my Norton product on my device. Protecting your devices and managing your Norton product is as easy as adding a new device in the Norton Management portal. Follow these instructions to install or reinstall …

Since I used this product for three PCs on a home LAN, this was not essential but it was an interesting option, but seems more useful if you have other types of devices.

I have had no software or security problems so far, the features file cleanup, disk optimization, startup manager, firewall management seem to be as good as in recent, previous versions.

Strongly recommend. Security software is an essential and this is a good one.