Customer Reviews
Ease yourself into the pool, don't just jump in.....
I've used Norton products on our computers since the late 1980s, and generally have found them to do exactly what they're hyped to do. Over the past few years, however, they have become "bloatware," consuming far more system resources than necessary. If you want a reasonably responsive system, after installing Norton you'd best disable many, if not most, of the "automatic" services set on by default during the installation. I've also used Zone Alarm Pro for ~5 years; love the program and the depth of configuration you can set-never had a problem with Zone Alarm. So, after the last year or so of Norton Anti-Virus failing to start automatically, I started looking for a replacement. I tended to lean towards Zone Labs because of my earlier experiences with them, but the Amazon reviews for the complete Internet Security suite left me unsure. I decided to go with just the Zone Labs Anti-Virus product. First, I opened Norton and turned off everything. Then I ran the Windows System Services console app (services.msc) and turned off or disabled anything with any Norton or Symantec association. Only then did I install the ZL Anti-Virus. A caveat is in order: although the ZL manual says if you have a previous version of a ZL product installed it will ask if you want to proceed without uninstalling the previous version, it didn't. Instead, I was informed that this install would be a "downgrade" from Zone Alarm Pro to "just" Zone Alarm. I went ahead anyway. After installation, the firewall appears to be as was before, and all my settings were retained - good news! Everything appeared to be functioning well. I have a separate anti-spyware app, so losing that capability in the "downgrade" wasn't really an issue. Only then did I completely remove Norton. So far, I'm happy as a clam (touch wood!).
It's a virus in of itself!
My Norton subscription is expiring soon and I have heard great things about Zone. For the price, I figured it would be worthwhile to compare the 2. There was no comparing though. Before loading the Zone software, I turned off the Norton. The installed Zone software zapped my Norton (even though I had turned it off) and it became unusable. It was not just disabled, Zone actually stripped components of the Norton program right out of the program file (got the files corrupted message at the time of the next restart). I removed the Zone software and reinstalled the Norton. Who knows how it would have worked? I won't have a software making the decision for me between using it or a competitor. If you're thinking of comparing, don't bother; "it" won't let you. I'll stick with Norton.
A very good option for new or inexperienced users.
I am going to recommend this for the majority of users and readers because it passes two key tests:^M
