Norman Personal Firewall Review
Many people act on the recommendation of their local computer tech when choosing an anti virus or firewall solution. This is all well and good, except that the tech is usually acting on a sales-driven basis as opposed to a needs basis, which means that you may be purchasing sub par or unnecessary software. I saw this take place when my mother, who does little else other than read e-mails from her computer, purchased a firewall, anti-virus, registry cleaner, popup blocker, and history eraser at the recommendation of her service tech. At first glance that all seems well and good, but don't you find that a bit excessive for someone who merely reads their e-mails?
Norman's solution is much more economical, as well as user friendly. All of the components (which we'll talk about in a moment) are integrated into one sleek, streamlined package. This keeps the costs down, as well as the junk and install times down as well. How does it rate when compared to individual solutions? Well, let's find out.
Features
Norman Personal Firewall is a very well build program, incorporating several leading-edge security techniques into the application itself. This means that it secures both your Internet connection, as well as your home computer. This also reduces the possibility of someone, such as a misguided family member, changing or abusing the applications settings.
Norman Personal Firewall allows you to set a password to protect the settings. This means that the settings that you've created for parental control filters, ad blocking, popup windows, etc. are all safe and secure.
The program can be customized quite easily, and this makes the software one of the better ones when referring to usability and ease of use. The warnings are set in place if you make any non-recommended changes, and the software lets you know what you are doing every step of the way (via a rather clever “details” menu).
Using Norman Personal Firewall
This software is loaded with features, menus, options, and tool bars. If you're like me, and you love to able to micromanage down to the last detail, you'll probably be in heaven. However, you don't need to commit to that level of interaction in order to get the most from this firewall. For someone who doesn't want that much input, you can simply select a series of preset security levels and let it do its own thing.
The software becomes transparent once you've installed it, and it can be difficult to access at times. Notably, if you ever forget your password, you're screwed. You have to delete and then reinstall the program from safe mode, as we had trouble uninstalling it without the password in regular Windows operation.
However, if you keep track of your passwords, you won't run into this problem.
Conclusion
This firewall is feature-laden, loaded with good ideas, and it is all well executed. It just goes to show that you don't need multiple programs, as this one can do it all and then some.
Highly recommended.
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