Norton 360 - Multi-Device - 2014 product reviews

When I was given this product to review I was hesitant because like many people that used Norton products in the past - and I am referring to in the past like just after Ghost (dos based) - there was the Norton Utilities software. Now I used Norton utilities back when it was owned by Peter Norton and it had his smiling face on the front cover. In 1990 it got sold to Symantec.

The problems I saw over the years and by the time 2005 rolled around, was that the software was effectively bloatware. It was inefficient in its operation, got overly top heavy on the GUI rather than focussing on the code behind it. I stopped using Norton Utilities around this time. The antivirus protection was worse than not having it at all.

Fast forward to Norton 360 Multi Device.

I have it on good authority that a brainstorming summit was held. People were invited to Symantec HQ from NZ and had free reign to rip apart everything about Norton they had grown to hate. Then something interesting happened. They listened.

Norton 360 Multi Device allows you to protect up to 5 devices. For my situation I have one Win 8 Lappy, One Win 7 Desktop, 1 iPad mini, one iPhone5 and one S4. That's all the operating systems, languages and devices all in one household. Installation was straightforward and I found that with the one account with Norton I am able to get hold of support by emailing, live chat and remote administration once registered with the Norton Cloud.

We are not using the parental controls feature as our kids are too young to be on Facebook etc, but the firewall configuration was good. I was able to allow or block access based on application and connection type ie I could block Photoshop from checking for updates and I could prevent DNS floods from coming in. Mind you they would have to get through the Router firewall first and its rules, windows firewall and rules before Norton had to worry about it.

The software, once activated, comes with a host of free add on programs also from Norton but I have not selected any yet.

The protection we had on our phones and iPad looks great. We are able to remote lock the devices, display a message on the screen, get them to make a loud noise so we can locate them or track them like a find my phone type arrangement. I have had to use this feature once when I left my iPhone in the back of a cab one night but as with all gps tracking it will show the location to within one house so it could be anywhere.

We found that if you install the software on your phone first (free version) before linking it as a device licensed, the features are limited. We could lock it remotely, scan it for apps and delete them and scan the SD card. Once we added it to our licensed hub, we were able to backup the data and contacts, erase the phone, it seemed to have more protection than the lite version also. We had fun testing out the remote photo capture function. You can make your phone take pics of what it sees and that would possibly help if you were trying to locate it.

We found that there were less features available for the iPhone than the Android though. I am not sure why but the program probably has limitations imposed by Apple. You cannot snap pics on iPhone or lock locate or wipe. You can do this using the Apple cloud though, so no great loss.

When you activate the software on the PC you get 25gb of online storage. This means you can do a partial backup of your PC important files as well as licensed devices. I have 55gb of storage in Dropbox and I struggle to choose what I want to make retrievable because in this day and age once you have included your documents folder your contacts list you are into the real storage hogs. The images and videos, now that every mobile device can take them, chew up storage space on my main pc. Gone are the days of only needing to safeguard "files". I have outlook.PST files for eg that are gigs in size not to mention my music and my images taken over the last ten years. Anyway it is a nice addition but I feel 50gb as a start would have been nicer.

The licenses can be transferred which is nice because my S4 is currently with AMI and I am getting a new device, so that license would effectively be lost. It would be the same if it was stolen. I can just log in and transfer my license from the dead S4 to my insurance replacement one.

The installation was straight forward, we trialled the free version first then activated it to see the differences and for the remaining 11 months it has left I won't have to worry about 30 day trials.

I found that for the price it was the only product that would protect over 3 devices. We would have got by with 3 because the Win 8 Laptop and the iPad never leave the house but being able to protect 5 is a real drawcard.

The software looks great too. Big clear buttons, a nice green subscription status at the bottom with days remaining and easy to use menus down the right side. Basic PC utilities included are things like Startup Manager which I find useful to see what apps or programs are sneakily inserting themselves at boot to update themselves etc and optimiser which is essentially at its root a defragger. I use other inbuilt tools and more admin level service enquiries directly though so those didn't set my world on fire.

For the price and even better if you get at least one other person to chip in within the household, the protection you get for the 5 devices is well worth the price tag. If only they had listened sooner.