Basic Norton 360 (One Year) at a much reduced price.

[Xenophon PCDGS]

In shops such as W H Smith, I have seen this basic Norton 360 product on sale at really discounted prices on special stands. Is this just a marketing ploy by Norton?

 

[SargeNpton]

Tries to lure you in by buying cheap and then charging full whack for the annual re-subscription after 12 months. All you do then, of course, is cancel that licence and buy another cheap copy from Smith's.

 

[arbeia]

Yes, caught with that one. At renewal (automatic) they charged me, if I recall right, £124 for up to 20 licences! Need 4 at most in this house. Instead of asking how many you want they just put how many they want on.

 

[Railcar]

The problem with all such programs is that because they check everything coming in off the internet (and inevitably take time to do it), they slow the computer down. Twenty-six years of doing without has confirmed my view that, as long as one is careful, a fast computer is preferable to a slow computer.

 

[GusB]

Personally, I wouldn't give any Norton products house room. I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked to take a look at a PC or laptop that has almost ground to a halt and, while it might not have been the only culprit*, Norton was always a bit of a resource-hog. In many cases the subscription had run out anyway, so the computer was carrying the burden without getting any antivirus updates.

I'm not sure if it's the case today, but antivirus suites like this were an absolute pig to remove because they'd embedded themselves so deeply. I used to get rid of Norton and install AVG instead, although even the latter seems to have lost the light footprint it used to have.

It has been mentioned several times on other similar threads that the built-in Windows Defender does an adequate job.

* Usually it was down the user having many run-at-startup programs, and a system tray that took up half the width of the screen!

 

[Bevan Price]

Personally, I wouldn't give any Norton products house room. I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked to take a look at a PC or laptop that has almost ground to a halt and, while it might not have been the only culprit*, Norton was always a bit of a resource-hog. In many cases the subscription had run out anyway, so the computer was carrying the burden without getting any antivirus updates.

I'm not sure if it's the case today, but antivirus suites like this were an absolute pig to remove because they'd embedded themselves so deeply. I used to get rid of Norton and install AVG instead, although even the latter seems to have lost the light footprint it used to have.

It has been mentioned several times on other similar threads that the built-in Windows Defender does an adequate job.

* Usually it was down the user having many run-at-startup programs, and a system tray that took up half the width of the screen!

Try something like Revo Uninstaller (free version) or ccleaner (free version). They both do fairly thorough jobs in removal of old software and/or unwanted junk that the internet drops onto computers. Revo takes several stages to search for residual files, and may be slow at times, but it is worth trying. There is also a "paid-for" version which offers additional facilities:

Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware - Free and Full Download

Free fully functional download of Revo Uninstaller Pro, Pro Portable and Revo Uninstaller Freeware. Quick and fast download here.

www.revouninstaller.com

 

[D365]

The problem with all such programs is that because they check everything coming in off the internet (and inevitably take time to do it), they slow the computer down. Twenty-six years of doing without has confirmed my view that, as long as one is careful, a fast computer is preferable to a slow computer.

Not to mention that Windows 10 has decent anti-virus built in. Between that and due diligence, why would any home user need more?

 

[Railcar]

Windows 10 is still slow compared to Windows XP, which will boot from 'Press the On button' to 'Ready to use' in less than 30 seconds.

Setting the browser to cancel all History and cookies every time it is turned off helps to keep the computer running fast. It also makes the computer much less interesting to roving bots.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

When some of these products stress that they cover ransomware and malware, are those claims fully justified? Does Windows Defender cover both those two named items?

 

[londiscape]

When some of these products stress that they cover ransomware and malware, are those claims fully justified? Does Windows Defender cover both those two named items?

No. Absolutely not. No desktop security product is ever justified in making this claim, to be honest they ought to be stopped from making them.

The raw fact of the matter is that the malware and ransomware industry (for that is what it is) plays a constant game akin to bi-directional whack-a-mole against the legitimate software developers, including security product providers, operating system vendors (both open- and closed-source) and application vendors. In operating systems, it is a long-established truism that security updates may patch or mitigate against vulnerabilities, but as soon as new features are introduced, new vulnerabilities are also introduced with them. As soon as a "hole" is plugged, others are revealed. There is no such thing as a "completely secure" system once it's connected to the Internet.

Best way to approach this is to accept that you will fall victim to malware or ransomware at some point, and as time progresses, the probability of this occurrence tends towards 100%. Your security software may, or may not, extend the life (in terms of time) of this event happening. Therefore, plan for what you will do when this happens - and the answer is backups, backups and more backups.

Look at backup strategies which combine online and offline backups. Online for convenience - handy when you accidentally delete something and want to get it back. Offline for safety - for a home user, if you back up to an external drive which you disconnect when not being written to, it can't be compromised (bit of a caveat here - if you don't realise you've been infected and plug in your external drive, it can be caught - see below re versioning). Cloud backups have their place, if you're in a position to pay a few quid a month and your data is more valuable than that, this also adds a layer of resilience which can't be easily got-at (not saying it's immune, but the miscreants have to try a bit harder) by a malware infection on your own machine.

Main question is "how valuable is your data?" - for home users data tends not to be "transactional" by which I mean it doesn't change regularly, unlike business databases, CRM systems etc. and is more likely to be family photos etc. and other stuff that has sentimental value, so get a couple of external hard disks, copy onto each and store in a desk drawer (or fireproof safe, or bank safety deposit box!). For transactional data, one needs to consider daily backups, multiple versions, retention periods spanning many weeks etc. etc.

Hope this helps

PS - I wouldn't touch Norton with a ten foot barge pole - it ought to be classified as malware in its own right

 

[dgl]

Windows 10 is still slow compared to Windows XP, which will boot from 'Press the On button' to 'Ready to use' in less than 30 seconds.

Setting the browser to cancel all History and cookies every time it is turned off helps to keep the computer running fast. It also makes the computer much less interesting to roving bots.

Windows 10 will boot extremely quickly if the machine in question has an SSD, W10 is optimised for SSD's and as such can be quite slow when used with a mechanical hard drive. There as crertinaly huge boost in speed (from unusable to a speed machine) when I upgraded my mum's cheapo i3 Lenovo from a 500GB? 5200rpm SATA3 HDD to an Intel 1TB PCIe SSD. Also my aging Core2Duo desktop that runs the 32bit version of W10 with only 2gb RAM and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD is not too sluggish at all and is perfectly usable.

 

[Bevan Price]

I would disagree that Norton should be avoided - it has helped to prevent contamination several times for me. True, it is a bit expensive, and nothing is perfect, but I still consider it worthwhile.


Factors I have found to make my computers slower are:
1. Windows updates. Each update can add hundreds of temporary files, which are not deleted automatically when installation finishes.
2. When you install new software on your computer, it sometimes inserts itself into the start menu - without your knowledge or permission.
Both these factors can occupy memory and make startup slower. Also Windows update sometimes seems to claim priority over anything else on startup. You can control when you allow updates to occur, and system utilities can edit the startup menu, and delete temporary files, and I find that this can greatly improve startup times.

 

[Kite159]

They will try and make the money back by automatically renewing you (as they like to take your card details when you input the registration code)..

Cost of the renewal I've seen quoted at £89!
(Same product purchased on Amazon is £15)

 

[Mcr Warrior]

They will try and make the money back by automatically renewing you (as they like to take your card details when you input the registration code)..

Can this auto-renewal be avoided by using a payment card with less than 12 months until expiry?

 

[Kite159]

Can this auto-renewal be avoided by using a payment card with less than 12 months until expiry?

Or signing up using PayPal as the payment method but deleting the authority via PayPal.

It's designed to catch people out who won't notice the large charge, the sort who just renew with their insurance companies without doing comparisons etc. A loyalty penalty.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Back to the Norton 360 product, I notice that the branch of Rymans, the stationery supplier, that I called in at yesterday was also displaying the same stand selling the basic Norton 360 product as a greatly reduced price. as the one I saw at W H Smith.

 

[gswindale]

Factors I have found to make my computers slower are:
1. Windows updates. Each update can add hundreds of temporary files, which are not deleted automatically when installation finishes.
2. When you install new software on your computer, it sometimes inserts itself into the start menu - without your knowledge or permission.

I'm not sure you mean the Start Menu?

I'd personally be extremely annoyed if, when I installed a copy of Photoshop, that it didn't insert itself into the start menu - that's the obvious place to go to to launch it, and that won't really slow anything down

Some programs do also insert themselves into a folder that was called "startup" on older versions of Windows - that can certainly have an impact on boot times, although now I suspect most run as a "service".

 

[najaB]

Windows 10 is still slow compared to Windows XP, which will boot from 'Press the On button' to 'Ready to use' in less than 30 seconds.

And be riddled with malware ten minutes later! Well, actually it probably won't since you won't be able to load most websites due to no support for TLS 1.2 or above.

No desktop security product is ever justified in making this claim, to be honest they ought to be stopped from making them.

At least one vendor offers an up to $1M indemnity against malware/ransomware infections while their product is installed. If a company is willing to put its money behind a claim then they're more than welcome to make it.

 

[D365]

I’m still not clear whether, when compared with the built-in Windows Defender, Norton 360 (or any other ”anti-virus” software) can offer any advantage. Is there anything that would make the monthly/annual subscription worth my while?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I’m still not clear whether, when compared with the built-in Windows Defender, Norton 360 (or any other ”anti-virus” software) can offer any advantage. Is there anything that would make the monthly/annual subscription worth my while?

They must have got something right in their marketing department, as their products, looked at a world-wide sales figure, do very well.

 

[Typhoon]

They must have got something right in their marketing department, as their products, looked at a world-wide sales figure, do very well.

Inertia and spin. If it's pre-installed, if nothing has gone wrong, there must be an assumption that it is 'working' so why investigate what might be 'better'/ cheaper?
People are rightly concerned about viruses, hear scary stories so look for an anti-virus that they have heard of - Norton or MacAfee. The same reason why shoppers buy certain brands of, say, washing up liquid when consumer tests when consumer tests show others are more effective.

 

[londiscape]

At least one vendor offers an up to $1M indemnity against malware/ransomware infections while their product is installed. If a company is willing to put its money behind a claim then they're more than welcome to make it.

Wow - that's a big claim and somewhat brave as well. I was unaware of this, would you be willing to share which vendor offers such indemnity?

 

[najaB]

Wow - that's a big claim and somewhat brave as well. I was unaware of this, would you be willing to share which vendor offers such indemnity?

Sentinel One.

SentinelOne’s cyber threat protection warranty program provides its customers with financial support of $1,000 per endpoint, or up to $1 million per company, securing them against the financial implications of a ransomware attack, if the company indeed suffers an attack and SentinelOne is unable to block or remediate the effects.

https://www.sentinelone.com/press/s...-1-million-cyber-threat-protection-guarantee/

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Now I see that W H Smith branches are now also offering the Norton 360 Deluxe one-year version at a 50% discount, side by side with the standard Norton 360 one-year version.

I assume that Rymans will follow suit.