Norton 360 Version 6.0 Review

The war against viruses, trojans and malware has been one without an end. We’ve seen a crazy escalation in these unwanted elements in the recent past, but there have been a slew of antivirus products in the market, so you’re convinced that if your PC has the right protection, then it’s safe from these problems. Norton recently released their new version, the V6 of their Norton 360 and 360 means all-round protection. Does this one prove so efficient? Lets find out. 

Interface

The first roadblock that distinguishes a good antivirus from a great one is the interface. Imagine you having to pull your hair out just to find out where the infection is and how exactly to remove it. Yes, it should be as simple as a few clicks. With Norton 360 v6, Symantec have upped the ante on how simple a security suite should look like. It’s got a similar look and feel to their Norton Internet Security 2012, which we reviewed earlier and the installation of the software is quite a breeze. Pop in the CD, enter the key and within minutes you’re into the matrix. 

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The control panel

As for the software itself, there’s a nice choice of colours, which give the software a pretty sophisticated look. The main panel gives you an overview of what’s protected and what’s not and all basic scanning and backup functions can be accessed from there, itself. The Windows 7 widget allows you to access the most important features required on the go. 

For newbies, there’s a dedicated help section on the top right corner, so if the settings and the detailed features intimidate you a bit, you know where to go. Overall, navigation through the interface is a breeze and there’s adequate detailing and explanation given throughout the various sections to keep you well informed of what you are doing. 

Features

Norton 360 is your one stop shop for all your PC safety related requirements. It covers everything from online identity theft, phishing, spyware, spam, viruses to even loss of photos, music and other stuff. The PC Tuneup function allows you to monitor your PC’s speed and take effective measure to get it working at an optimum level. The software we got for review allows protection for three PCs for upto one year. 

Advanced settings

The four main tabs, include PC Security, Identity, Backup and PC Tuneup. Let’s see what each of them have in store. PC Security, as the name suggests, helps you run your scans and updates and manage firewall settings. It also lets you run Norton Insight, which basically monitors any application you install and informs you if it’s harmful or unstable for your PC. Another feature that they’ve included in the scan bit is the addition to scan your Facebook Wall. We’ve seen a lot of malicious links existing on Facebook walls in the recent past, so this one’s a welcome addition. 

The Identity Safe tab lets you securely store addresses, login details, passwords and credit card numbers and it works in tandem with their ‘Norton Safe Web’ feature that warns you if you happen to cross the line to browse and also against fake websites. It has a Check Site option as well, so if you want to double check, you don’t need to load up the malicious content on your browser. 

Help.. when you don’t know where you going

The Backup tab allows you to create sets of data you want to create a back up for. These clusters can be stored online, in their Secure Online Storage or anywhere on your hard disk. You get 2GB free of online storage at the moment for storing your private data. Schedule options are available as well, in case you don’t want the software to automatically back up all content. 

The last is the PC Tuneup option that lets you optimize your disks, clean up your files, check startup entries and view your diagnosis report. It’s basically a couple of third party utility software bundled into one software that does it all. Plus, it’s quick and doesn’t take too much system resources, so that’s an added benefit. Parental control has been included as well and Norton has also launched a mobile app that keeps you well secured on all your electronic devices. 

With everything going into the cloud, this software also lets you use cloud-based management to download, install and transfer your Norton products to your PC, anywhere from the Internet. This might come in handy, in case you purchase a new computer in the middle of your existing subscription. 

Your one stop shop

Performance 

Under idle conditions, the software takes a bare 7 MB, which is pretty good, considering Norton Internet Security 2012 that we reviewed earlier, took around 15 MB of memory. CPU utilization, however, was at a good 4-5 percent, as compared to 0 percent on their earlier offering. 

During scanning, the CPU usage will fluctuate more or less between 20 percent to 52 percent, which is quite high, considering we were testing it on a Core i5 CPU running at a clock speed of 2.5GHz. Multitasking may turn out to be a problem, if you’re running a couple of memory intensive applications, but if it’s just the scan running, you’re not going to run into problems. 

On the expensive side

Verdict

The Norton 360 v6 is priced at Rs.3,085 for one year of protection for upto three PCs, and Rs.1,649 for one year of protection for one PC. It’s slightly more expensive than the Internet security software they recently launched, but this one has a lot more features than the other. The lower priced one might itself be an expensive purchase for most users, but if you’re willing to shell out on one product that does it all, then this is a good buy.