Symantec AntiVirus 2004 Professional Edition

I also used Zone Alarm Pro along with it to provide great security on my cable modem broadband internet connection. It is now the year 2004 and I have Windows XP Pro but I still use Zone Alarm 4 and Norton System Works Pro 2003 on my main computer and will do so until my subscription updates run out. However my 1Ghz Pentium 3 notebook computer that was running the same Norton 2003 and Zone Alarm Pro 4 began to slow to a crawl with each live update that I downloaded. It became so slow it was annoying me to use that computer at all.

Then along came Norton System Works Pro 2004 which has Norton Antivirus 2004 bundled with it. I was ready to go out and purchase the product to update my 2003 version in the near future but decided to read some reviews about it. All I heard was one nightmare after another on the review sites and about how flawed the activation system was just after its release. Then I had a friend purchase and try the retail version of Norton System Works 2004 on his computer and his experience validated many of those negative claims. Here you have a company in Symantec that took the most widely used and popular antivirus and utilities products in the world and seriously decreased my loyalty to their brand.

Although no one liked when Microsoft required activation with Windows XP at least they brought you a superior and more stable software product with support to back it up. Even though there have been some serious security problems since its release I believe Windows XP was a huge improvement over previous versions of Windows which justifies the current hassles with the Microsoft product activation feature.

With Symantec's 2004 products you now have a buggy and annoying product activation feature and increasingly sluggish and bloated software that significantly decreases the speed of even the latest 2 to 3 Ghz computers. The question is why would they do this ? Only the Symantec marketing and development departments can answer that question.

Thankfully we live in a diverse capitalist society that allows for competition. Needless to say I jumped off the Norton ship this year in favor of a speedier and more hastle free product in the name of McAfee Antivirus 2004. After my Norton 2003 subscription ran out I uninstalled the entire Norton System Works Pro 2003 program and I installed the new McAfee Antivirus 2004 on my notebook running Windows XP Home. I still use Zone Alarm Pro 4 for a software firewall. Compared with running Norton 2003 I could not believe the improvement in system speed with McAfee. The new McAfee and Zone Alarm Pro seems to be the right combination for me now and when my Norton subscription runs out on my 2.4 Ghz desktop system I will very likely will change that computer to the new McAfee Antivirus program also.

It is too bad that Symantec effectively messed up one of the best antivirus products on the market. If you are running Norton 2003 or earlier and do not want to change to McAfee you might want to simply extend your subscription service for one or two more years and save yourself the hassle of buying the retail boxed version of Norton AV 2004. I know that I am not the only customer that feels this way about Norton AV 2004 and I hope that Symantec learns from its mistakes and returns to offering what customers really want with the next System Works Pro 2005 and Antivirus 2005 version release.

12 of 13 found the following review helpful:

stay clear away from this  Nov 15, 2003
By M. P. Long "mplong"
I've used Norton Antivirus for several years and loved it. But this year they decided to add product activation. I hit the bug a lot of people have hit where if you have windows xp and your system is a certain way, it will keep reactivating everytime you reboot until it finally disables itself. Symantec has no solution to this at this time (several weeks after they discovered it). I finally ended up getting a refund (after going through about 10 phone numbers).

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:

Even free isn't worth it  Jul 18, 2004
By Hunter Vaughn
This is the second Symantec product I've purchased over the last few years. After hours on the phone with Symantec "support" and more hours surfing their "award winning" support site (who gave them this award and what were they smoking?!), I vowed never again to own a Symantec product.(...)AntiVirus may be a fabulous virus detection, prevention, and elimination product once you get it installed and functioning correctly, but doing so takes an absurd amount of effort. There is a conflict with a standard Windows XP update, so you can't even install without removing that update, installing AV, then reinstalling the update. Once installation was complete, I couldn't activate it for no apparent reason ("Not a valid A8Key"). Turns out AV couldn't get to the Symantec servers, even though I could surf anywhere else I wanted to. No solution for opening ports or anything, you just have to call for phone support (limited hours, M-F only). After 30+ minutes on hold, I had to read the product key (24 alpha-numeric chars) then write down the activation key (34 alpha-numeric chars). Now it's supposedly activated, but it's causing issues with MS Outlook, LiveUpdate won't work, the icon disappears from the system tray, and I can't launch/configure the program once the icon is gone. Solution? Uninstall and reinstall Symantec Norton AntiVirus.

Avoid this product like the plague.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:

may damage windows installation  Feb 09, 2004
By Jason Sheets
First let me say I own a consulting company and am a Cisco Certified Network Professional and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

Second let me say in the last 2 days Norton AntiVirus has destroyed two windows installations on two seperate systems. The first system was a Windows XP system and the second system was a windows 98 system.

The installation performed flawlessly, however after reboot XP was unable to find necessary system files. The system was viress free and stable before the install.

The 98 system functionaled normally until a liveupdate updated the core package of norton antivirus, it then also refused to boot.

The problems that people are having with this product are not from them messing up the install, they are with a legimiate and dangerous problem with the product.

I have sent Symantantec a letter but they are already aware of the problem, do not dismiss this problem lightly or you may find yourself reformatting your computer.

A software program should never contaminate or destroy an os, with this in mind I am not able to recommend this product to anyone.

See all 49 customer reviews on Amazon.com