When it comes to using computers, it seems most users are not technically inclined. And I wouldn’t expect most people to have good technical knowledge… after all, a computer is a tool, and it should be used to get something done (email, spreadsheets, surfing fishing websites, etc).

Some, products like norton 360, should enhance someone’s computer experience.

Ideally: by quietly blocking anything nasty from infecting your computer, while allowing you full access to the computer and internet, without slowing down the computer.

OK, many of you will already know that norton software does slow down your PC.

But I recently saw a (technically unsophisticated) customer, who was having trouble logging in and accessing many websites, as well as getting many cookie errors.

It didn’t take long to realise that norton 360 was silently blocking all cookies.

It seems that soon after norton 360 was installed, it popped up a message about cookies.

The customer got the impression that cookies were “dangerous”, and so followed nortons suggestion to block all cookies.

After some explaining, the customer realised that cookies are not dangerous, particularly on modern browsers, and I then deciphered how to make norton re-enable cookies.

That fixed most problems, but one obvious problem persisted: a particular website would not display forum pages (the forum was only available after logging in).

After some tinkering (and fully disabling norton 360), I decided to try firefox… and it had no problem at all. In the end, I ask the customer to try using firefox, as it could take me a while to track done this problem.

Customer agrees, and also admits to feeling ripped off in buying norton 360, as after getting it home, he realised that of all the “features” advertised on the box, his PC already did all except 3 (AV, antispyware, performance optimisation).

It didn’t take much to convince him to call me back about 1 month before norton expires, so that I can install some free software that will protect the PC just the same.