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Norton Anti Spam 2005

There is not much to see with Norton Anti Spam 2005. It integrates with yahoo email online, Outlook 2003 and even Outlook Express. As much as I hoped this program would work, it slowed down email, caused my email not to work and basically made checking email into a long drawn out affair.  Sending email that it missed to the Norton Spam folder took way too long. While you wait for it to "do its thing" you wind up with a locked up computer.

The program did work on one system, but not the other. My suggestion is try it, or better still try it on a system with a Pentium 4 Hyper Threaded with at least a gig and a half of memory.

Norton Anti Spam 2005

As a rule, new software is usually an improvement over an older version.  Occasionally there are glitches, issues and fixes that need to be rushed out, but as a general rule most newer applications are improvements.

This is why I am really surprised with the problems I encountered, or rather inconsistencies, with Norton Anti Spam 2005. It seems Symantec made a real effort at adding more muscle and ease of use to their product line, but this one seems to have missed the mark, or it did with my system.

On the plus side, Norton Anti Spam works with Yahoo mail online, Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express along with Eudora. Shipping with ad blocking and pop up and pop under protection, the application is full featured.  I take no issue with the range and scope of the program. The ability to scan Yahoo email accounts for spam is a nice extra.

On the negative side, the program is slow and has been known to cause slow downs and numerous other problems, that is what I have gathered form others. After I installed Norton Anti Spam 2005 on my test system the mail kept arriving at increasingly slower intervals.

At one point  I could not retrieve any email at all. When I reverted to the built in anti spam in Outlook 2003, everything functioned. This was on a system with Norton Anti Virus, Norton Firewall and Norton Security. I had everything Norton and the Anti Spam simply was not functioning either well or consistently.  On another note, I installed the program on yet another machine and to date I have had no problems. But I have noticed that it can truly slow down email delievery.

In my highly informal tests, the built in spam filter for Outlook performed as well as Norton and did not cause the slow downs. However, for Outlook Express users, looking towards a third party is a must being that the program has no anti spam built into it to date.

When Norton Anti Spam works, it works acceptable. The added functionality of working with Outlook Express and Yahoo Email online is super, however for all of the functionality and ad blocking built in, the program is very slow. It is also slow once you tag email as spam. As you wait for email to move to the spam folder, your PC is held hostage until it is finished. Should you have multiple email accounts to access from your email client, the slow down is appreciable and annoying.

Defeating the purpose of fast junk free email, the slowness and bugginess of the program is a frustration. This is too bad being that there are functions here not found in most other spam killers.

Much more effective and faster than McAfee dated offering, when you get Norton Anti Spam running it is decent, if not slow.

My advice is stick with their Internet Security, but for now wait or at least test this out before making an investment of time and money.

System Requirements

Windows 98 through to the current XP home and XP Pro

80 MB of hard drive space

IE 5 or higher

DVD or CD drive for product installation.