Pc Mag review of security suites

you can read it here & they give thumbs up to Norton. I'm sure that's no surprise.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2231575,00.asp

 

could have figured that much lol.. i know its a decent program and they made huge improvements but imo its no where near the way all the mag reviews make it out to be. has to be dollars in their hands for all of these reviews ... lol at least i think so

 

It is much like Consumer Reports rating a Toyota highly; it is a safe and non-controversial conclusion for a majority of their readers based upon the subjective criteria employed.

 

yeah, no surprise here.

pcmag=pcworld=norton=$$$=

 

Norton Internet Security 2008

Editor's rating: 4.5
Reader rating: 2.5

Norton 360

Editor's rating: 4.5
Reader rating: 2.0

 

Note the consistent relationship between the amount of advertising dollars expended, and the rating of the software by their reviewers. Of course, it is hard to prove a clear conflict of interest, but any application of logic and real world business experience, would draw you to only one conclusion. Note also, that users/readers ratings are usually significantly lower in percentage terms than the reviewer's. This again would be an indication that something is not right with the reviews in the first place.

 

Except that the review<==>advert causality can just as plausibly work either direction. If I have $XXX to spend on magazine ads and I'm splitting it between two magazines, it's rational to spend 80% of $XXX advertising in the magazine who just said "This Product is Grrrrreat!" and 20% of $XXX in the magazine who says "This Product is OK but nothing special".

Of course then there's still a second-order incentive for the magazine to praise the products with the largest advertising budget. I'd rather have 80% of Symantec's ad budget than 110% of BitDefender's.

 

But using this logic would not justify the rating for Bitdefender when you look at users ratings. Because it gets beat to hell here.

 

I agree 100%

 

Perhaps those of you who have invested so much love for boutique security products simply can't recognize that Symantec rates high because they have a good product.

 

Actually, you're not wrong from a cleaning and protection perspective. It WILL do that. The current version for many is also light on resources (for some, I just happen to not be one of them)

However, they received these reviews in the past for very subpar versions, when performance was bad for EVERYONE. While you're right that the current products are good, I think its also true that the reviews come through dollar-green tinted glasses.

 

I won't discuss it one more time. Symantec have a very poor detection, We can compare with Kaspersky, F-Secure, Avira, BitDefender, AVG, NOD32 and other... Symantec/Norton is worst. Point.

 

At the last av-comparatives ondemand test, Norton got 98.80%. That is poor?

 

Very poor detection? Then how did it get an advanced+ rating from av-comparatives? Point, my you know what.

 

What tests are you basing this on?

 

Symantec update removes Web filtering program

 

norton has poor detection?

you might aswell just say that kaspersky has poor signature detection, and nod32 has poor heuristics

 

Norton is first class when it comes to file infectors and complex polymorphic viruses.

 

Yes, there is definitely a potential conflict of interests and Symantec has had a deserved reputation for being heavy, bloated, etc. But I find it interesting that hardly anyone disputes the validity of the test result by av-comparatives, which does have an established reputation for its independence.

Rob

 

Apparently CNET is not in Symantec's pocket, lol.

"The Norton Internet Security 2008 interface is ghastly..."

Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think it goes well with Vista's default color scheme.

"...the suite itself can slow your computer to a crawl..."

Huh? What version are you testing, '08 or '04?

I won't go on anymore with this.

I believe tiagozt is referring to how Norton handles localized threats in Brazil as he mentioned in CSJ's thread. Whether this is true or not I don't know but since localized threats are delivered by email mainly, it only takes common sense or an ISP that has built in virus/spam filtering (or both) to minimalize these threats.

 

I have Norton on two of my PCs. NAV on one, NIS on the other. No problems and very lightweight.

 

I don't get it.... KIS7.0 recieved a score of 4... under the "Antivirus" section. While ZAIS7 recieved a score of 4.5. Isn't ZA using Kaspersky's A/V engine?

 

Correct , So it is a little starnge to say the least

 

Likewise BullGuard uses the BitDefender engine and got 3.5 while BitDefender got 4.5.

Its probably due to differences in options, easy of use, etc.

 

the new computer shopper didnt like nortons nearly as much as they did..