Hey… Doc loves a freebie, especially a good one that’ll point out shortcomings in security and performance.

So, it’s taken Symantec years to rehabilitate its name, and I read a review that really amazed me: Not in a good way either.

AnandK (a regular reviewer at The Windows Club) wrote a review of this free tool made by Symantec, which you can read here:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/trust-norton-pc-checkup-tool

In short, not good at all: It finds “false” threats (regular, simple cookies), and doesn’t detect your own security software (if, I hope you have installed) and tells you that you are vulnerable. It’s suggestion to fix this? You guessed it: Buy Norton software.

It also tells you your PC performance is poor. Maybe, but AnandK is a fiend with his computer. He reviews suites and MS solutions regularly, and I believe him when he says his machine is lean and mean. He also made numerous restore points which the “diagnostic” software didn’t detect. Well, maybe it only detects Norton made restore points. If so, what’s the point?

So, Norton PC Checkup is at worst “scareware” and at best “adware”: 11.5 Megabytes of it.

Avoid it. Doc rates it two thumbs down. Maybe they’ll fix it, but its rep is shot.

If you want a good tool, try Secunia's, here:

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

To those celebrating, Merry Christmas from me to you and yours!