A year ago, I would not be praising Norton. In fact, if you mentioned a Norton product I would have told you to uninstall it. When friends and family asked me to fix their machines, one of the first things I would do was uninstall any Symantec Product on their system.

But times change, and I was impressed by Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009. The install time was under 50 seconds for me. The resources it used were far less than previous versions of their software.

But Norton 360 isn’t Norton Internet Security 2009. It’s a full fledged Security Suite with Backup Solution and System Optimization. Norton 360 is a combo of Norton Internet Security and what used to be called Norton System Utilities. Knowing this, I was kind of afraid of Norton 360, because I believed the bundling of Utilities and Internet Security caused previous versions of Norton to be bloated and slow.

So I didn’t think Norton 360 would live up to the expectations I now had for it because of my great experience with Norton Internet Security. Even after a briefing I had with Symantec last month where they showed that it would install fast and not gobble up System resources, I couldn’t just take their word for it. I wanted to test it out for myself. I basically bugged my contact at Symantec to get me a Gold Copy of the software so that I could check it out before it was released Today.

I will never doubt Symantec again. They are NOT BULL SHITTING US when they say their software will install in under a minute. Norton 360 ver. 3 installed on my system in under one minute. I SHIT YOU NOT.

I timed it at 52.3 seconds. Little slower than NIS 2009, but Norton 360 has more to offer than NIS 2009 does so it’s expected.

One of the biggest complaints people have with previous Norton Products was that they are impossible to uninstall. So, I uninstalled Norton 360, and it did it in less than 3 minutes. The uninstall process did take longer, but most uninstall processes do.

I then installed Norton 360 again; this time it took 56 seconds, but that’s still under a minute. I honestly still can’t believe it. I know that NIS 2009 installed in under 50 seconds for me. It just literally boggles my mind that they are able to install this security suite on my system so quickly. I literally can’t wrap my mind around it sometimes.

After having my mind blown away at how fast Norton 360 installed, I began playing with it.

Norton 360 is split up into 4 Categories: PC Security which handles Virus Scans and your Firewall, Identity Protection which manages your passwords and protects you from phishing attacks, Backup which pretty much is self explanatory, and PC Tuneup which helps you keep your system running fast.

Let’s start with the PC Security Category. Here you will find all the tools you have to protect your system from Viruses, Hackers, Spam and Spyware. There are tools that will scan your incoming Instant Messenger Files to SONAR which basically seeks out viruses on your system. You pretty much need not do a thing. Norton Automatically does it all for you.

However, if you are an advanced user like myself, you can edit settings. You can change the schedule and even tinker with the firewall in a way previous versions of Norton 360 did not allow you too.

Now let’s talk about the Identity Protection Category. Here you find tools that will help protect you from Identity theft.

One of the newest features in this Category is Norton Safe Web. Norton Safe web is basically a web service that notifies you if you are visiting a bad website.

For example, you go to Google.com and you search for something. Norton will place a green check mark next to the link if the site is safe.

If you hover your mouse over the green check mark or the grey question mark, you will be given a little info about the site.

If you click Full Report you are then taken here.
If the site is dangerous it will tell you what the site does that is bad. If you are a webmaster and your site is identified as bad and it isn’t, there is an easy and quick way to have Symantec scan your site again. If they still feel there is something wrong, they will notify you where and what they think is wrong. If their initial scan was wrong, they will correct the status in a few hours unlike other similar services.

In the identity protection category there is also a password manager which makes it easy to keep track of all your passwords. This has been present in the last few versions of Norton 360, but what is new in Version 3 is you are able to categorize your logins.

Then, there is the Backup Category which again is self explanatory. Norton 360 Version 3 allows you to easily configure how you want to back up your data. They even offer free online storage (2GB). This is not enough for the average person in my opinion, but you can purchase more storage if you need it. The cost for additional storage is $29.99 for 5 GB for a year.

Personally, I feel that Online Backup is not cost effective. With the time it takes to back up your data and the amount of storage the average person needs, an external hard drive is more cost efficient. I personally have 18 GB of Pictures alone that I want to back up, another 10 GB of videos, and loads of documents. My total backup is close to 32 GB and it grows by about 30 to 50 GB each year. The 100 dollars per 30 GB I would have to pay per year is a lot of money. I wouldn’t want to pay 500 dollars for online backup in 3 years when I can buy a Terabyte external Hard Drive for 150 dollars. I can buy 2 for $300. If I am really worried about losing my important data in a home fire, I can back it up to the 2nd drive and stick it in my safe deposit box at the bank. They charge $25 – $50 a year if you bank at Chase. They may even give you one for Free if you have the right account and Status with the bank (no minimum monthly deposit amount required). If you don’t have a safe deposit box at the Bank, you can go to your local office supplies store and get a Sentry Fire Proof and Water Proof safe for about $150. I actually bought one during Christmas on sale for $79.99.

A suggestion to Norton, if you want to increase the Online Storage Market, make the pricing reasonable. You may have to work with ISP’s to prevent them from capping and throttling users who are backing up large amounts of Data to your servers.

But you don’t need to use Norton 360 Online Storage for your backups; you can use a hard drive on your computer, an external hard drive, CD’s or DVD’s.

I personally have Norton 360 backing up to my Western Digital My World Book Edition NAS. While My World Book came with a free copy of WD Anywhere Backup, the Norton Backup Solution is 100 times better in my opinion. Sorry WD.

Now let’s move onto the PC Tuneup Category. Here is where you will find tools that optimize your hard drive. This helps speed up your hard drive. The registry cleanup is here; this helps keep your registry clean and error free. It also has a start up manager that is easier to understand than MSCONFIG.

You can even run a diagnostic report on your system. While that might sound scary, Norton has actually made it easy to read and understand. If you are an advanced user, you can dive deeper into the report as well.

Norton 360 Version 3 is an amazing product, and I still am shocked at the speed of its install. I also ran a virus scan, and that was super fast as well. It really helps that Norton 360 has Norton Insight which pretty much tells the Virus Scanner which files it can ignore because they are trusted.

Overall, it’s a fantastic product and a definite Must Have for any PC owner. If you just purchased a new PC and Norton 360 version 2 or lower is on it, upgrade to Version 3. You won’t have to pay a dime for Version 3 as long as you have time left on your subscription. If you don’t have time left on your subscription, buy it because it’s a great product. Because it’s so great and as we said a definite Must Have, we award Norton 360 Version 3 our March 5 Star Must have Award.

To get your copy of Norton 360 visit http://www.norton.com it’s worth every penny. Version 3 retails for $79.99 or $99.99 for the Premier version.