Norton 360 is an all in one protection, tuneup and backup PC solution which includes components like Antivirus, Anti Spam, Firewall, PC tuneup, Backup and much more. Norton has tried to combine everything that a PC user may need and can just install Norton 360 instead of installing different applications. Norton has been working hard on its products to make them lighter on system resources while performing their job as few years back.

The installation was too fast and it got installed withing a minute on my Windows 7 system. It was able to detect the existing Antivirus solution on my system and asked me to remove it before proceeding with the installation. No reboot was needed after the installation and it started working instantly on the system.

Too Simple User Interface

First thing that anyone will notice after installing Norton 360 on the system, is too simple Graphical user interface. The GUI is too simple if you compare it to any other security solution. It is divided into four parts PC security, Identity, Backup and PC Tuneup. All the four sections show if everything is fine with your system and the status will show as “protected” if all is well with the system. If something needs to be fixed on the system, you will get that message in the main window itself. If you click any of the four icons, you will get easy access to list of activities and settings related to that tab.

Tasks

Apart from these, the main window shows you your License status, access to various settings etc. If you click the “Tasks” tabs, you will get a whole list of tasks that is possible with Norton 360. These are categorised in three different groups namely General tasks, Backup tasks and PC tuneup tasks. General tasks include access to Run scans, live update, checking Vulnerability protection and much more. Similarly Backup tasks include access to running and managing backups of the system. PC tuneup tasks include tasks related to tuning up your PC like Startup manager, registry cleanup etc. You can run any one of these just by clicking on them.

If you need more details, you can get that too with an option to configure each of the Norton tasks.

Settings

Settings of different components of Norton 360 are grouped at one place and are easily accessible. You can just click on any of these and you will get another set of options for that component. Quick controls at the right side  gives you access to some quick controls to quickly enable or disable some of the most basic settings.

If you click on Antivirus settings, you will get access to loads of settings for “Automatic Protection”, “Scan and risks” & “Antispyware and updates”. All settings are basically in the form of simple toggles which you can enable or disable with just a click.

 Startup Manager

It includes a Startup Manager that can be effectively used to improve your system start-up time. Start-up Manager lets you manage all startup programs based on resource usage. You can set ” Delay start” of any start-up item so that it doesn’t affect your system start-up time.

But this manager does not give you a option to totally disable a startup item which must be there. Also, this Manager does not give you a option to optimise your start-up time automatically by managing these items.

System Diagnostic

System diagnostic report gives you a all in one report for your system about operating system as a whole, programs, Hardware etc. If it detects any issue it gives you a option to fix it using the tools available with it.

System Performance Report

System performance report gives you access to daily report of the system if it faced any issue whether its a performance issue or malware issue. You can view the details of all the alerts that occurred before.  It includes the report for Memory and CPU usage too.

 Backup

You can manage your system backup easily. By default, it can backup your Documents, Pictures, Music, contacts etc. If configured, it can backup all your hard drives automatically just like any other backup solution including the option to schedule your backups. You can even save your backups online or to a CD/DVD or any other USB drive.

The online space that comes with it is though just 2GB which is too small for a paid product. Even a free account at Dropbox will give you 2 GB of cloud storage for free with much better features. Norton should either increase the Free space or it can remove this feature from the product.

Parental control not Integrated

Even though this is a all in one solution, Parental control is not integrated right inside this product. It asks you to install another application which is bad. Parental controls form the integral part of even Internet Security solutions and it must be integrated into the product without any need to install one more application.

Negligible effect on System Resource

One of the best things about Norton 360 is that in-spite of bundling of so many applications into one product, the system resources used by Norton 360 are almost negligible and I never felt any issues on system performance or lag. I am using Norton 360 on my system for almost 1 month.

Conclusion

Apart from the features mentioned above, Norton 360 includes too many other features that are not mentioned above. Overall its a good product if you want all in one bundle of applications which can do everything for you. As usual, I am not commenting on the detection rates and other anti-malware capabilities as I cant test these extensively.

One of the things about License activations that I dont like is “Norton Account”. Honestly, I don’t want to store my email address and licensing information online everytime I use a Norton product.