NORTON SYSTEMWORKS 2004 PROFESSIONAL

Symantec has a long list of products in its Norton range. Despite its name, System-Works 2004 Professional (£85 inc. VAT) is classed as a home and home office product. There’s quite a lot of software on the CD, arranged in four sections. There’s System Works itself, featuring Antivirus 2004, Cleansweep, Web Tools, Password Manager 2004, Ghost2003, Process Viewer; Norton GoBack 3 Personal Edition; Performance Test 4.0 and Norton Utilities, which includes Disk Doctor, Win Doctor, Wipe Info, Fast and Safe. After a Pre-install virus scan, Norton gets to work, requiring over 200MB of space for the full installation. By default all options are turned on, including One Button checking, which runs a system check once a week, along with a weekly virus scan.

However, this seems far too infrequent for peace of mind. You end up with four icons in the SystemTray, and your PC should now be safe from most problems, but you will note that there’s no Firewall in the list of software. Individually, all of the modules have some merit, apart from Performance Test 4.0. However some are unnecessary and duplicate software that you are likely to already have. Norton SystemDoctor, for instance, is a monitoring utility that’s less effective than the software supplied with most laptops. Similarly, we would rather use Windows Task Manager than Process Viewer, and Windows System Restore instead of GoBack. We are also unconvinced by the Password manager, which encrypts your passwords, but nothing will diminish our faith in Norton AntiVirus or Ghost.

On the other hand, we were concerned that Windows reported that our 2.4GHzPentium 4 was working very hard once System Works was installed. We could open and close applications, but there’s no doubt that Norton slowed the system down. Pricing is a little confused as Symantec tells us that you can buy this software on the High Street or online for £80 (inc. VAT). However, Symantec’s own online shop charges the £85(inc. VAT) that we list above. In fact you can find this package on sale for £55 (inc. VAT)quite easily, and that’s an attractive price.

RATING: 6
PRICE: £72/£85 (EX/INC. VAT)
KEY FEATURES: ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE WITH A LOAD OF EXTRAS
OS COMPATIBILITY: WINDOWS 95/98/ME/2000/XP
CONTACT: 01628 592222 WWW.SYMANTEC.CO.UK