NORTON 360™ VERSION 5.0
Symantec - 60.10MB (Commercial Trial)
Over the past few years, Symantec has completed a course reversal for its Norton consumer Internet security suites. The massive package of security tools works better than it ever has before, with an impressive set of features, some useful new tools including the free Power Eraser, and third-party security efficacy benchmarks that are nothing short of remarkable. Meanwhile, CNET Labs' performance benchmarks indicate that though Norton doesn't leave the smallest footprint on your system, users should see a minimal impact overall.
The new version of System Insight also profiles your programs to determine if any of them are slowing down system performance, and automatically alerts you when a program is eating up too many resources.
There's also the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool, which will clean heavily infected systems enough to get Norton 360 installed, and can create a rescue tool on disc or USB so that your computer can be resuscitated. The backup features in Norton 360 have been improved, too, adding in automatic file encryption to the backup process. Lastly, Norton Safe Web's social-media scanner has been imported from Norton Internet Security 2011. Currently, it still only supports Facebook, though that's a good start: it will check your Facebook wall and news feeds from within Norton.
Features and support
There aren't many new features in Norton 360, or even new major features. What's changed is how Norton presents its features--across the board the program is easier to navigate--and how the features operate.
There aren't many new features in Norton 360, or even new major features. What's changed is how Norton presents its features--across the board the program is easier to navigate--and how the features operate.
The reputation-based security checks where your programs were installed from and when they were installed, and compares that data against the 58 million users participating in the crowdsourced Norton Community Watch to see if any of your programs should be red-flagged. Norton's System Insight component has been bumped up to version 2.0, which is the proprietary internal network that warns you when your programs unnecessarily hog system resources. This gives some extra heft to the system performance map, where you can click on any spike and see what caused it.
The second iteration of Download Insight applies the same reputation-based logic to new downloads, and the third version of Norton SONAR (Symantec Online Network for Automatic Response) looks for suspicious software behavior and automatically chooses protective actions. You can toggle how aggressive SONAR is in the Settings window.
