Norton Personal Firewall

Article = None , personal experience

The windows fire wall has a habit of letting through who it wants , and you have no way to stop that. Thus I download "coffee cup FTP" and it gives me annoying ad's and contacts the internet and the fire wall won't stop it. If it accidently blocks something I can enter it in an exception list and it will be allowed through. But if it lets through something I think it shouldn't ...too bad. Microsoft obviously believes it's perfect and gives you no way to alter that.

So I decide , well , my ISP gives me a free version of norton , I'll install just the fire wall part and nothing else and see how it goes.

Install went ok, I was able to select the fire wall. Updating the fire wall sucked. Five minutes of waiting with no progress bar or hint anything was happening. No wonder you get a lot of bad installs of norton , people think their computer has crashed and reboot in the middle !

It insisted you turn on Windows updates.
- Sorry. But Billy Boy Gates abused the windows update feature way too much, forcing too much down your throat as an emergancy patch. What exactly is the "emergancy" for forcing everyone onto internet explorer seven ? Do you know how many calls we had for that when they pulled that stunt ? My Windows Updates stays off permanetly thanks.

It lets an unauthorized user update windows.
- Switched to my wifes account. The icon blinked annoyingly at the bottom right and while the "fix now" button wasn't there (she's not an admin) It did let her go to the update page to do whatever harm she could there.

It updated the google search bar with no warnings
- while logged in as a sub user with limited rights no less. I hate the google search bar and didnt' even want it in the first place, let alone let the google gang now run whatever programs they like by "updating" their unwanted search bar whenever they like.

There's no way to turn off the alerts on that annoying icon at the bottom right.
- I know what I'm doing. But it doesn't beleive me. Do things it's way or else. And the "fix now button" doesn't tell you what it does. If anyones logged onto the computer as administrator they just press the button and the blinking goes away , and anything you did that Norton disagree's with ? Now undone. And no warnings. And in the case of windows updates , no way to fix it once it's let billy boy gates hijack your computer and run it his way instead of yours.

I did a search on google for "Norton Removal Tool" and d/l'd it (normally norton demands you pay 75$ on your credit card to give you the url , there's no link to it on their site) and removed it.

I'll run my computer my way , thanks. You don't permit that ? I don't want you.