( 7 reviews )
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( 3 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: 03-11-2006
If you want to waste good money on utterly worthless software that does not work well at all Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User is designed especially for your computing needs. This firewall keeps others from using your computer by insuring YOU WILL NEVER BE PRODUCTIVE ENOUGH USING THE COMPUTER TO EVER HAVE ANYTHING WORTH STEALING STORED ANYWHERE ON IT! From installation to daily use thE Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User firewall gives almost non-stop problems that would savagely test the patience of a saint. This firewall is protection that will come at the cost of raising your productivity while online to absolute dizzying heights OF total, complete and utter uselessness. If Pharroh had computers in acient Egypt installing Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User would have been a formidable plaugue on his systems strong enough to slow every computer to a useless crawl! From the minute you install Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User the conflicts and problems begin. How the product is designed when it does work correctly is not user friendly. TNorton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User suffers from the fact its programmers arrogantly designed the interface as if they alone know exactly how EVERY END USER OF THEIR PRODUCT wants to customise their FIREWALL protection scheme. This software is insulting because, its engineering assumes all end users are happless Dolts unable to define the fire protection scheme most effective for thewir unique situation. The end user as dumbell assumption can be seen by the buttons for functions you really would like to have that would have made the product truely useful like easily adding programs to an allowed list, turning off annoying updates or other customer configurable elements are not included by design. We are let with the rather lame uninspired plain vanilla useless choices the programmers of the Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User have deemed appropriate for us great unwashed masses of computer users who are the end consumers of this junk. Whenever the programmers get so high and mighty that they fool themselves into thinking they alone can do and successfully engineer in all the HEAVY FIREWALL THINKING for the end user you can almost bet the resulting software product wlll be a peice of junk and Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User proves my point completely. Note it costs a whopping $30 per session to have the dear kind gentle folk at Symantec spit torrents of lies into your unprotected ears should you be foolish enough to ask for support for this product that is best consigned to the nearest dung heap. Paying $30 to provide technical support for a buggy badly designed product that should have never got pass the Symantec Quality Control Department providing they even have one. If Symantec Quality Control ok'ed this mess makes me wonder if they exist at all. I used to own the BullDog Firewall that was the basis of this product and it was awesome and well thought out. What's really bad is Symantec has ruined a once great product by adding tons of ill conceived software garbage that do not work as advertised. Everything Symantec has added to this firewall seems to be effective only at slowing down even the fastest computers to points that render them all far beyond useless. In a word from installation to execution I label find this software called Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User wholly pathetic in my humble opinion. I would buy this software as a gift only for those computer owners I hate with an abiding all consuming passion. If you are looking for a good software firewall go elsewhere stay away this is not it. Take it from your favoite AMAZON wOLFif you buy Norton Personal Firewall 2005 - Single User you will Howl with Frustration so loud the sound will be audiable to the living and dead alike!
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( 4 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: 01-17-2006
I have used Norton/Symantec for over 5 years and had previously been completely satisfied...until the 2005 version came out. I purchased 2005 and almost from the moment of installation on my brand new Dell 2.8 ghz, I began having problems. Once I got those corrected, my machine got slower and slower. I suspected that Symantec had programmed a spyware/tracking feature into the security system but of course, they emphatically denied it. So, I looked to my ISP and Internet Explorer for answers. Neither was able to understand why I was having the continual slow-opening web pages except to offer the suggestion that perhaps spyware had somehow integrated itself into the system. Of course, I didn't mention that I use Ad-Aware, Spybot and CCleaner every week. After 75+ emails back and forth to Symantec (because it became abundantly clear that their telephone support staff had no interest in fixing anything), I finally told "Hajeesh" not ever to contact me again...that I would never buy another Norton product...that I believed they had a tracking system installed which slows my computer to a crawl and that their "security system" is a piece of junk. Lo and behold, it seems the State of Texas Attorney General is, in fact, suing Symantec/Norton because there IS a spyware tracking device installed in their programs which is totally undetectable by any of the other spyware products. So, a word to the wise, stay as far clear of Symantec/Norton as you can if you care anything about your privacy or the speed of your computing.
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( 2 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: 09-20-2005
Would not install (non-stop errors). Continually showed "disabled" (I'd enable it on the menu and the icon would only show "disabled"). Crashed my other software. Support is NONEXISTENT! (They have the nerve to charge $30.00 for technical support- per incident- for help with the garbage they've sold you. Perhaps the only way to actually get help but they weren't getting another dime out of me) I can't believe what's happened with this company. Three years ago it was all we used in our offices (and me at home). Honestly, this has been the worst experience I've ever had with any software. My other four computers have McAfee (no problems). One came with Norton AntiVirus preinstalled so I purchased the (same) firewall. Needless to say they BOTH went! Never again! Just hearing the word "Norton" gives me hives-
