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Norton SystemWorks 2003

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Norton SystemWorks 2003 is a suite of highly dependable and useful tools, along with Norton Ghost and antivirus. These include a homogenous group of programs, like Norton Disk Doctor, SpeedDisk, UnDelete, WinDoctor, Optimization Wizard and Registry Tracker. This edition works on Win 98/ME/2000 Pro and XP, and comes with a one-year free subscription that downloads the latest software updates from Symantec’s website.

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In our tests,

the tool managed to successfully restore a system that crashed 

Besides Symantec’s software utilities, there is GoBack from Roxio, which is a useful tool that can boot up a crashed system from a stable image it keeps on the same hard disk. In our tests, the tool successfully restored a system that crashed when we deleted important files needed to run Windows. It’s great if your system becomes unstable due to a nasty program you installed. The software can revert your system up to a week-old state, depending upon how you configure it. 

If you like to keep a tab on how well your system is performing, you can install the Performance Tester (from PassMark) as well, which runs benchmarks on your system to gauge its performance. You can select a baseline system against which the performance of your computer will be benchmarked. The application is good, could have beeen more useful if it suggested ways to improve the system’s performance. 

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Windows’ own system and disk-management tools are no match for Norton’s. Our disk-defragmenter test on a 4 GB hard-disk containing Win 98 on an AMD Athlon 500 MHz system took a little over an hour through the Windows Disk Defragmenter, and only 15 mins with Norton SpeedDisk which defragments the disk as well as cleans up the registry of unnecessary files. You can even schedule

SpeedDisk. 

Norton UnErase, which recovers files deleted even from the recycle bin, works very well. It can recover deleted files, e-mail, etc as long as it’s protecting the Recycle Bin, which it does by default. On the other hand, another program called Wipe Info completely wipes out a file beyond recovery from the system. This is useful if you want to destroy your confidential information. Other utilities are aimed at safeguarding it from viruses, disk errors, and improving the system’s performance.

These include the One Button Checkup, the DiskDoctor and WinDoctor for checking and correcting hard disk and

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Snapshot

Price Rs 5,400 + one year free updates
Key

specs
: Norton Antivirus 2003, Roxio GoBack, Norton Ghost, system/disk-management tools
Cons : Redundancy in utilities, some utilities should be removed and price reduced
Pros : Common interface for utitiies, speedy defrag utility
Contact : Symantec, Mumbai
Tel : 26570658
E-mail : custserv.india@symantec.com 

Windows-related problems. 

The bottom line If you already have Norton SystemWorks 2002, then the only new things you’ll get would be the new version of the Antivirus, WebCleanup (to remove temporary internet files, history, cookies and cache) and Connection Keep Alive (to keep an Internet connection on, when using dial-up). This doesn’t make it a compelling buy for existing users. Plus, the price could be a deterrent for new users. 

Shruti Pareek

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