Here comes the flawless Norton 360 v4

Norton have been on a roll ever since they redesigned everything from the coding to the overall interface in their security products in 2007.

Norton have been on a roll ever since they redesigned everything from the coding to the overall interface in their security products in 2007. Norton 360 comes tuned with all the latest features that Norton Internet Security 2010 has, plus it also includes backup features along with PC tune-up options.

Breaking it down
To start with, the Security Suite is divided into four main sections — PC security, Identity protection, Backup and PC tune-up. Hover over any one of the four sections to run a scan, backup files or run optimisations at the click of a button. The "Flip" option gives an overview of the impact that Norton and other system files have on the machine. To get a more detailed analysis of the chart you can switch to the last 10 minutes/30 minutes or extend it to a day, week or month (default is set to 90 minutes).

There's a summary of the applications installed, total number of detections and quick scans too. In addition to the hourly LiveUpdate downloads Norton 360 makes use of Pulse updates — small incremental updates every couple of minutes.

The task panel has a plethora of features via the task panel, which are grouped in three categories - General, Backup and PC Tuneup. With over 16 options available, the interface remains neatly organised. The Security Suite allows you to either backup data to Norton's online storage space (2 GB) or store your files locally on a separate hard drive. Backup schedules can either be set to automatic or you can choose a weekly/monthly or manual modes. Backups will not restore your drive from a system crash, as it doesn't create an image of your drive but creates copies of files. You can also add or exclude files and folders from being backed up.

Fix your problems
PC Tuneup consists of a Diagnostic report tool, a Startup Manager, Registry Cleaner, Norton Insight and Norton Tasks, which allows you to view CPU and memory usage. The Diagnostic report gives an overview of the programs and hardware installed, which can be used as reference to help find and fix problems. Moreover the application is not only limited to detections based on virus definitions but also obtains information about programs from the Norton Online Community that keeps an updated record of known good files and questionable files.

The Startup Manager allows you enable or disable unwanted applications from starting automatically. The one noticeable drawback is that Norton 360 doesn't allow you to preview or review changes to the registry cleaner. Norton 360 consists of quick controls that bring in a more direct approach when enabling or disabling services.

The Verdict
With its overabundance of features you definitely would assume that the product would be nothing less than a memory hog, after all it is Norton. Wrong!! With coding rewritten from scratch Norton 360 is a flawless little product that definitely surpasses most security suites.

Tthere is a significant improvement in scan speeds - it took less than 5 minutes to scan 10 GB of data. The program will never greet you with a pop up when an application requires to connect to the net. The Norton 360 Security Suite retails for ₹3,200 (3-user license) and ₹1,795 (single user license).

What we like
* Feature rich
*Excellent scanner and firewall
*Low on system resources
*Well-detailed interface
*Nothing much to complain about

What we don't
*Nothing we didn't like