I wanted to know if Norton 360 would work with the newest version of Firefox, v.5 before I updated FIrefox. (This is partly because of the long delay in updating N360 when FIrefox was bumped to v.4 (I think). I depend on the Norton Identity Safe a lot and was not happy with the lack of coordination between Mozilla and Norton on that version upgrade.) "Nathan" was not able to provide anything useful to my two queries, the last of which was: "Norton 360 compatibile with Firefox 5?". Finally, by clicking the "Ask the Norton Community" link of the Norton Support page, I found the "Update Available: Firefox 5.0 Compatibility Release" as one of the top Hot Issues & Hot Fixes". So I finally found what I was looking for. Thanks for the update by the way.
But you could manage this kind of thing better:
1. "Nathan" should have been able to find this for me. Does Nathan not search the Hot Issues and Fixes list? Or did it but not find a match, eg. because I asked about "Firefox 5" vs. "Firefox 5.0"?
2. Beyond assessing and fine tuning your savant-idiot Nathan, I believe that you would serve your customers, and yourself in the process, if you would handle "major" udpates using a more proactive delivery method. What constitutes "major"? Well, one criteria would be when an external app. (such as Firefox) -- with which a major component of a Norton product/function, such as N360's bundle of functions-- interacts, is going to/does do an upgrade. For example, when I checked for a new version of N360 from the N360 app window, the response is "You already have the latest version of your Norton product installed on your computer." How about here you add any interesting caveats, such as, "If you plan to upgrade Firefox to 5.0, you will need to install this [link] patch." You might provide email notices, especially if you are collecting info from users about which browsers they use, (if you do??).
My point is there is a difference between patches which address exceptional situations vs. situations that will affect a wide range of customers, such as when there is a major release of a browser. (While it may not be a "version release" for your product, it is a "version release " for a interrelated external product, and hence should be treated more along the lines of how you announce your own releases.) For these latter, major, class of issues, you would put your customers more at ease if you let them know -- maybe even before the browser producer mentions it -- that a new version is forthcoming and that your team is reviewing the changes and testing and developing updates as necessary.
I like your product, use it a lot, and N360 has been technically sound. But I think you could do better to utilize a customer-empathic perspective to consider how to go about advising customers of pending/needed updates.