Hello, all-
I just purchased a new HP computer with Vista Home Premium 64-bit. It came with a two-month trial of Norton Internet Security, which I really like, and plan to subscribe to. It's clear that the software works fine with my 64-bit computer.
But I do have an additional question- - are the PC Tuneup tools compatible with 64-bit systems? I could not find an answer anywhere in the literature, nor did the Vista Compatibility page offer me any answers. I liked the old Norton Utilities, and want to run them on my three computers (the other two are 32-bit machines). Can I do this?
It would be helpful if Norton adds whether or not a product is compatible with 64-bit machines. They are rapidly growing in number- HP is really heavily invested in new 64-bit machines.
Thanks for your time.
Over the years I've used Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks but these days I'm finding two things:
Windows itself is including more and more tools of various kinds - you can clean out temporary files, cookies etc with Disk Clean in a drive's Properties.
Some functions are not really needed as much as they used to be. For example, today's very large disks (my first hard drive was a 340MB one in a Thinkpad and it had two operating systems on it -- OS/2 and Windows!) and the growing use of the NTFS file system makes fragmentation much less of a problem and less effect on performance than used to be the case.
Some tools, like registry cleaners, are more likely to cause problems than cure them unless you know more about Windows and the tool than the tool does or you can't decide whether to accept its suggestions or not. And I suspect not even Microsoft knows everything that goes on in the Registry. In general Windows is best left to sort out its own problems rather than have the user second guess what is going on.
You should also be aware that despite the trial version of NIS on your computer with a 64 bit Operating System, not all features of NIS2009 are fully implemented in the current version. They have said they are working all the time to finish updating this for 64 bit use.
Given this I would advise very strongly not to try to use any tools from earlier versions of Norton applications.
Thank you for your insight and advice, huwyngr. I am going to have to dig for those Windows tools you discussed- I'm fresh off XP, so am still learning Vista's features. The Registry is definitely not for the faint of heart!
I would be interested to learn what features are not fully implemented in NIS '09. I did take it to "Shields Up!" to see how well the firewall stealthed my ports (as well as Zone Alarm Pro did!), and I like the incremental back-ups. It's too bad I can't get on a "Let me know when you're ready to release 64-bit" list.
At least I am not as deeply in the lurch as I was when Windows 2000 came out- I got a professional copy free from MS right after it came out, installed it on a machine I was building, and banged my head for days with driver issues. I had to roll back to Win98! Never again the Early Adaptor!
NIS and the rest of the Norton family have been getting high ratings from reviewers I respect, and since Check Point has not created a verson of ZAP that runs on Vista 64, I'll come back to Norton. I left Norton because renewing the subscription was a messy ordeal. I heard they've fixed that.
Thanks again! I'll give you both 'solved' and 'kudos' credit.
Hello, all-
I just purchased a new HP computer with Vista Home Premium 64-bit. It came with a two-month trial of Norton Internet Security, which I really like, and plan to subscribe to. It's clear that the software works fine with my 64-bit computer.
But I do have an additional question- - are the PC Tuneup tools compatible with 64-bit systems? I could not find an answer anywhere in the literature, nor did the Vista Compatibility page offer me any answers. I liked the old Norton Utilities, and want to run them on my three computers (the other two are 32-bit machines). Can I do this?
It would be helpful if Norton adds whether or not a product is compatible with 64-bit machines. They are rapidly growing in number- HP is really heavily invested in new 64-bit machines.
Thanks for your time.