The latest edition of Norton 360 has been released last month making it even harder for other market players in the PC-security industry to fight the stiff competition from Symantec. The security software vendor came up with a totally new, revamped version of Norton 360 we're about to take a closer look at in this review.

Norton 360 by Symantec is a comprehensive PC-security, backup and tune-up utility that brings all aspects of PC safety under one hood. Previous users of Norton Internet Security, Norton AntiVirus or Norton Personal Firewall will notice that this edition of Norton 360 is just all they had in their older programmes plus a bunch of new extra features that ensure a safe online.

Installation

Installation of Norton 360 version 2.0 is a fairly straightforward, but time-consuming process. After the download of 74Mb installation files an installation procedure starts and on my box which runs Intel Celeron M 1700Mhz and 1Gb of RAM it took about 20 minutes to complete.

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If there is any other antivirus protection installed on your PC, Norton will complain and gracefully ask you to stop and uninstall this before setup can continue.

When all files are downloaded from Symantec's website, Norton will run pre-installation virus check to make sure no hidden threats are lurking.

After file installation is successful Norton will prompt you to restart the machine in order to complete setup.

Interface and user experience

While the first version of Norton 360 rolled out last year proved to be slow-responsive, heavyweight piece of software with often confusing or even misleading interface, this new edition of Norton 360, called version 2.0, seems to be doing much better in comparison to its predecessor.

The main control panel is split into four easily distinguishable categories giving you an overview of the actual protection state of your PC. This main interface is accessible from the Windows taskbar, where a tiny icon resides, telling you that Norton 360 is working on your machine. It indicates green if no problems are found and it indicates red if Norton needs your attention to resolve an issue.

In the PC Security section you can access Firewall, run scans or updates manually as well as view details of the current protection level.

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If Norton thinks your PC is doing fine and no security issues have been detected, it indicates green. If something's not right it will show red or yellow to draw user's attention.

Another three main sections configurable from the main panel are Identity Protection, Backup and PC Tuneup. Using these you can fine-tune your settings for privacy protection, schedule backups and optimise your PC's performance. With this menu you can configure Norton 360 to run scans automatically, perform disk defragmentation and generate reports according to your preference.

It is worth mentioning that Symantec is giving you a free 2GB online storage that you can use to automatically backup selected folders and files. You can ask Norton 360 to scan local disk for files of a given type such as photos, spreadsheets or Word documents and then automatically back them up using the free online space. It really is that simple.

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Nonetheless, the PC Tuneup section gives you little control over how PC optimisation is being performed. For instance you cannot follow disk defragmentation progress and its actual state. I would account this as a plus for non-experienced users who do not tend to tamper with advanced settings every time they use their software and ff you just need the job to be done, Norton 360 version 2.0 is right for you.

However, those users who want to fine-tune the optimisation and security settings, will find a set of options allowing them to do so in the Advanced Settings menu.

The Firewall is offering a broad range of settings where you can keep track of allowed and disallowed connections or applications and tweak them according to your preference. Norton 360's firewall puts you in control over the traffic rules but keeps it as simple as possible to avoid confusion of novice users. That is, all advanced options will be hidden away by default, but you can easily access them from the Norton 360 Main Panel.

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Norton 360 version 2.0 – The Verdict

With the newest release of Norton 360 it is obvious that Symantec addressed a lot of issues users complained about in the previous version of this PC security and tune-up suite. The performance problems seem all now to be solved and the application runs smoothly without any noticeable impact on system's performance.

This is because of the Symantec's improved background task scheduler that monitors CPU/memory usage and disk activity. Scans and backups are being initiated only when idle time parameters are met.

Control Panel window comes up fast when you need it and anti-phishing and identity security tools integrate with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox without any problems.

This new software requires less system resources than the previous version and even Norton Internet Security 2008 that is not as feature-rich as Norton 360 version 2.0.

If you plan to buy of a fully-featured PC-security suite that gives you extra tools to optimise performance and backup your precious data, Norton 360 makes for a compelling and recommended purchase.