NortonLive PC Tune-Up Service Review

by Jerry Jackson

Sooner or later almost every Windows-based PC starts to suffer from performance problems due to bloatware, old files, poorly managed Windows updates, or adware and viruses. Symantec promises to restore your old computer's performance with their NortonLive PC Tune-up service. Can a one-time fee of $69.95 really make an old laptop run like new? We put the team at NortonLive to the test, and the results might surprise you.

NortonLive is a division of Symantec that offers phone and online technical support for PCs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. NortonLive currently features five different services that promise to diagnose and fix problems that slow your computer, optimize disk space for improving speed, detect and eliminate spyware, remove viruses and Internet worms, check security to protect against hackers, and repair and maintain PC health.

The NortonLive PC Tune-up service ($69.99) is intended to speed up your old computer. A NortonLive phone representative takes control of your Windows-based PC remotely over an Internet connection and checks for viruses, spyware, unused applications, and optimizes your machine so your laptop runs like new again.

This is pottentially a great service for consumers who are trying to avoid the cost of purchasing a new computer. That said, is it really worth $70? Is this something you might be able to do on your own for free? We decided to take a closer look and find out.

How we victimized a perfectly good laptop
In order to put the NortonLive PC Tune-up service to the test the editors at NotebookReview.com intentionally infected a brand new laptop with bloatware, adware, and other malware that reduces PC performance and makes the computer almost unusable.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S10 that we used for this test features the following specifications:

• 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom Processor
• 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
• Windows XP Home Edition (SP3) and Quick Start OS
• 10.2" WSVGA AntiGlare TFT with integrated camera 1024x600
• 160GB 5400rpm hard drive
• Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
• Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless
• 4-in-1 Media card reader and ExpressCard slot
• 6-Cell Li-ion battery
• Size: 9.8" x 7.7" x 1.2" (including feet)
• Weight: 2.82 lbs (with 6-cell battery)
• Price as configured: $449

In order to get a brand-new netbook to operate like an old laptop that has seen better days, our entire editorial staff took turns doing everything a consumer should never do with a computer. We disabled anti-virus software and the pop-up blocker in Windows Internet Explorer and visited every website we could find that mentioned "free software," "free games," "free online poker," "free credit reports," "free screen savers," and, well ... you get the idea.

Whenever a pop-up window opened asking us to install something we clicked on it without hesitation. After a single day of this type of activity we ended up with 21 extra Windows start up items, 17 extra desktop shortcuts, five different Internet Explorer toolbars running at the same time, and it was impossible to browse the web without a pop-up ad appearing every time we clicked on anything. Some of the malware we installed even highjacked the Internet Explorer web browser and took us to sites we didn't want to visit. In fact, just leaving the computer idle for more than five minutes caused a dozen different pop-up ads to appear on the screen ... most of them for unknown companies advertising software and services that could remove the malware on the computer for a substantial fee.

When it was brand new the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 took less than 30 seconds for Windows start up and less than 10 seconds for Windows shut down. After intentionally infecting the computer with various types of adware and other malware the S10 took 58 seconds for Windows start up and 31 seconds for shut down. This is precisely the type of thing Symantec claims they can fix with the NortonLive PC Tune-up service.

How the tune-up process works
After our editorial team was satisfied with the amount of bloatware, adware, Internet Explorer toolbars, and other malware we had installed on the IdeaPad S10, I placed a quick phone call to NortonLive at 10:58 on a Friday morning. The service representative who answered the phone took a few minutes to get my account information and asked me to visit a NortonLive website to download an application that would allow her remote access to my computer. After a few clicks and a Windows restart the expert at NortonLive had control of my computer. The phone representative made it clear that I had access to a chat window and a button to disconnect from the NortonLive service at all times ... in case I wasn't comfortable with the changes she made to my computer.

Once the phone representative started the "tune-up" process it consisted of a relatively straight-forward series of steps:

1. Evaluate the system using a proprietary application that rates your PC's performance on a scale of one to five stars based on the following:
   - Speed
   - Disk space
   - Memory scan
   - Windows security
   - Norton product evaluation (is your computer running Norton Antivirus, and are the virus definitions up
   to date)
2. Disable Windows start up items that aren't needed (essentially disabling bloatware and adware)
3. Empty the recycle bin and lower the recycle bin size to 3%.
4. Create a system restore point (in case there are any problems later on during the tune-up process).
5. Go into Windows Add/Remove Software to remove unneeded applications (the phone representative always asked before removing items). The first items uninstalled from Windows were the various Internet Explorer toolbars.
6. Disable unneeded services.
7. Delete temporary Internet files (including the Prefetch folder).
8. Run disk cleanup wizard.
9. Reduce size of temporary Internet file folder.
10. Adjust size of the page file based on amount of RAM and hard drive space.
11. Clean the desktop (remove unwanted application shortcuts).
12. Re-evaluate performance on a scale of one to five stars based on the following:
    - Speed
    - Disk space
    - Memory scan
    - Windows security
    - Norton product evaluation (is your computer running Norton Antivirus, and are the virus definitions up
    to date)

We can safely assume that the exact steps used in the PC Tune-up service will vary based on how badly the computer is infected with adware or viruses, but the steps listed above are likely to be pretty standard for anyone who purchases the PC Tune-up service from NortonLive.

By the end of the "tune-up" there were still a few bloatware applications installed on the laptop, but none of these were malicious programs. Likewise, none of the bloatware in question negatively impacts performance (unless you use them), so we're not too upset that the NortonLive expert left them installed on the laptop.

The initial performance evaluation rated the IdeaPad S10 at just two out of five stars. After the PC tune-up service the S10 received a three out of five star rating. That might not sound like an amazing performance boost, but we're talking about a netbook here. Once the NortonLive service representative was finished the S10 was once again able to start up Windows in less than 30 seconds and shut down in less than 10 seconds. All of the annoying Internet Explorer toolbars were removed and the tune-up process likewise removed all adware and other malware from the laptop.

Before ending the call, the service representative took time to mention several tips to help me prevent my computer from suffering a similar fate in the future. Her first tip was, of course, "Don't click on pop-up windows while browsing the Internet." Her second tip was to perform disk cleanup once a month.

Finally, the service representative left me with a case number, a phone number, and her manager's email address in case there were additional problems or if I wanted to leave feedback. The call ended at 11:25 ... so the entire tune-up took less than 30 minutes.

Conclusion
The NortonLive PC Tune-up service does exactly what it claims. If your computer is running slow an expert will find out what is causing the problem and improve the speed and stability of your PC in as little as 30 minutes.

Of course, many well-informed computer users are capable of performing a "PC tune-up" that is equally effective at no cost. In fact, even if you don't know how to disable start up applications, how to disable unneeded services, how to delete temporary Internet files, or how to adjust a Windows page file, you can probably find out simply by doing some research online.

Still, there are many consumers who don't know how to do these things and aren't interested in learning how to do them either. Average computer users just want their computers to work ... and they might be willing to pay $70 for the convenience of having someone else solve their laptop performance problems.

Pros:

• Tune-up service works as advertised
• Easy enough for PC users of all skill levels
• Fast (less than 30 minutes from start to finish)

Cons:

• The tune-up process is simple enough that skilled users can do it themselves for free
• $69.99 is affordable, but it's expensive for something we can do ourselves

 

Wow, I never heard of such a service before. Nice to know, but yeah, every NBR member should know how to do basic "tune up", or they can post questions here, no need to spend $70

 

do they also clean the registry?
defragment the harddrive?
remove that norton app that we need to install?

$70 is expensive, for one time only!?... they should bundled it free with their security/performance suite purchase.

 

It is a 1 time purchase wobble987, I don't think that means it only works once... but I may be wrong.

This is nice to know of, even though I won't be purchasing it.

Also, IMO I'd rather it not mess with registry stuff. It really isn't necessary to deal with that, and I wouldn't want a program to automatically decide what to remove either! haha
Just my $0.02...

 

This is a complete joke of a service. Just pay the sub fee for an anti-virus and/or download a free one and run it.

I have absolutely no respect for the computer "experts" who charge these kind of fees for such basic computer help. I'd be rich if I charged this kind of money for all the times I've helped people with this kind of stuff.

People would be better off even just restoring computer to the manufacturer base image that came with it than doing these "tune ups"

 

Ah...the good ole days

At least its 7 bucks cheaper than the Geeksquad Tune-up service .

Agreed...this is why sites/forum like NBR are important...alittle time spent researching goes a long way.

But...playing devils advocate, time is money. Hiring an "expert" won't always be cheap, and if something goes wrong( Finagle's Law-Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment) thats even more time(money) wasted. I had one guy call me after he said he couldn't find his programs...turns out he "accidently" restored his computer to the factory state. Spent a good couple of hours re-installing/configuring his programs and setting it up to the way he was use too(ie everything on his desktop)...lucky he was a friend and my parent's tax guy.

BTW Jerry, do you have a review of the Norton's Green PC Service planned? Looks interesting, but I really hope its more than just:

- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2286307,00.asp

 

The only NortonLive service we planned to review so far was the PC Tune-up service since Symantec claims they can "improve speed and stability" and our editorial staff wanted to find out what they did and whether it was anything above and beyond what most experienced PC owners do.

If there are enough people interested in the forums we might review the rest of the NortonLive services. Just let me know by posting comments in this discussion thread.

The PC Tune-up service at least seems totally legitimate ... even though the service doesn't do anything you can't figure out on your own. In my opinion this is a worthwhile service for people who don't really understand Windows PCs and don't want to learn.

It's also great for those family members who call me several times a year asking me if I can fix there computer problems.

 

exactly.We can poo-pooh all we want '$70 is too much" etc and once in a while it's no problem but some folks for some reason just seem to mess up more often...and my time is money too.

 

It souds like thigs I do already, maybe I should get in the busness

 

Oh, ok, so those of us who make a living doing computer repair should just perform these 'tune-ups' for free. It's not like we'd get overrun by these calls, or anything, because hey, 'this guy makes your computer fast again for free!'

I'm not saying it's my favorite thing in the world, I'd much rather be swapping hardware and migrating people to Linux, but there's certainly more to it than installing an antivirus, especially when most people would end up installing Norton and having even more problems than before.

But you're right, I'll just volunteer 60+ hours a week cleaning up for people with no impulse control. You've shown me the light, I can't charge people for this, but then, I can't turn away a customer, either.

 

Controversial . . . but really, its pretty much time = money nowadays . . . .

I'd do it for whoever asks me for free, but IMHO, if everybody gets the knack that almost everything (especially knowledge) can be found on the internet today, a lot of ppl that have a job specialized in the computer field would be out of their jobs, really . . .

 

Wow $70 to make a computer run right. Either MS should make an operating system that is less likely to fail or the end user needs to learn how to maintain their system themselves. If your PC is performing that poorly that you need to consider this you are better off saving your essential files, reformatting your hard drive(s) and reinstalling Windows. The chances that MS is going to build an OS that is less infallible or can't update are remote. Anyone running MS software must be their own Admin or eventually no matter what you do you will need to redo your system.

 

I completely agree with you in terms of solving major performance problems in Windows due to misuse and exposure to malware, but let's stop and think about the "Average Joe" and "Average Jane" Windows users.

Most of the average Windows users out there would be scared out of their minds by the idea of reformatting and reinstalling Windows on their own. There's absolutely nothing difficult about it, and most of our regular forum members could do it half asleep or half hung over.

However, there are many, many people out there who just want their computers to work ... and they don't care about learning to do things like reformat a drive and reinstall Windows. I think a surprising number of those people would be willing to pay $70 to have someone fix their computers without having to leave the comfort of their own homes.

 

I am not so sure about that. There are indeed people who are not quite as proficient with technology as most who visit this forum, but my guess is that among their family and friends, there is at least one person who is good with computers and said person can be persuaded to come over and fix the darn thing, if not for free, then at most for a meal (which is going to cost a whole lot less than $70).

 

This is just a wasteful as those one time / annual tax programs.

 

The concept of this is good, but 70 dollars, even to the average jane/joe is way to expensive. If they don't know, may ask a friend or relative to vnc to their computer to fix it. Jerry is right, many people want their computer to just work, but in all honesty, not many will cough up 70 dollars just to do it.

 

I agree. There are a ton of people who still don't have a clue about fixing small things and I know people that will go out and buy a new system when they get into software issues. I think this is a good service since it will make it convenient to fix at home instead of bringing it to a service center. Because for many, learning how to do it themselves is NOT an option since they are not open to the idea. It's these kind of people who have been buying Apple since they are less likely to be infected. To own a PC means you have to be a little proactive. Yet many users will just ignore those messages that their AV has expired. They will then quickly swear off MS or Vista and go running to BB and buy an ibook. If everyone would take the time to be a little proactive there would not be much spyware out there since it would not be worth the time for authors to exploit machines if everyone had their security up to date. Unfortunately there are still a ton of machines that are begging to be exploited.

I don't agree that friends will likely spend the time to fix infections. I know I don't help people as much these days. Its not so much that they want my services for free.. and that's usually the case, but that they are unwilling to watch and learn why their machines are zombies and how to avoid it and fix those issues. I've been burned a few times helping and quite frankly don't help much now. There are millions of people out their that will pay this 70 bucks believe me. Or rather they might spend 1500 on a apple.

 

you can search google for "pc tune up", its free, it works.

 

Disclaimer - I work for Symantec, but am not involved with this product.

I got a promotional free service from this a few months ago. Really didn't think I had any use of it myself, but my 70 year old mother started asking me about buying a new computer because hers had gotten so slow.

Granted, its a 6 year old Pentium 4 based system, but I had this card for a free norton tune up so I figured I'd give it a shot. I gave her the card, and a couple days later she told me that she had done the tune up and the computer was completely fixed! Oh, by the way, "I can't seem to sync with my palm anymore" (I can't say for sure if the tune up removed her palm hotsync software from startup, but I suspect it did).

Periodically I've worked on her system, but I don't end up being over at her house all that often and when I am, we prefer to spend time talking or playing with the kids or whatnot, and not playing with the computer. I have done some basic tune up type work for her in the past, but this type of service gives her the ability to get it done herself without relying on the computer expert in the family. I'd like to see it be a bit cheaper though, and agree that the price is high for a one time event.

 

Hang on a min.

Back up your files, restore from recovery disk, restore your files
Done

and the machine is running as good as when it came out of the box

plus with the pain I have had of late removing Norton "demoware" supplied with customers' laptops, I dont want to go near anything they make for the time being.

 

I'm not sure this type of program would install much. Just enough I would imagine to be able to control the PC remotely. As for their main AV security suite products their newest versions are about as light and fast as anything on the market and will install in literally under a minute as well as uninstalling is pretty much a non issue these days. True, Norton products were truly horrible a year back but they seemed to have done a 180 turn for the better.. I don't read much negative reviews anymore on their newest products. I still think this newest product would benefit someone who would be dumb enough to purchase a new system to fix the problems. And believe me, there are plenty of dumb fools that do.

 

I'm surprised this tune-up worked so well, because I haven't heard the same of similar services offered at name-brand stores. Very cool, and nice review.

LOL . . . wow. Save the environment! My desktop would fail that test - 3.6GHz OC'ed quad-core, 4x hard drives in two RAID 1 arrays, dual video cards, although I have an extremely good quality PSU (Corsair HX620W). So at least the power is being used efficiently.

 

The best part of this review sounds like getting to install the bloatware. People have to remember that if you're posting in this forum you're actually about 10% of the visitors to the forum, the rest just read it and I'd estimate 30% of them can't figure out how to register because it's too complicated. We get enough emails asking "how do I register", so don't laugh at that. So folks here have to remember you're all in the minority by even participating in a forum and a large number of PC users will do all the stuff our editors did when they tried to infect the computer. $70 is a lot, but I think I'd rather get that as a gift to some of my family than be peppered with questions and requests for help on an ongoing basis. I wonder if Norton has a limit to the number of times you can use this service though, I know a few people who might call on a daily basis

 

The TOS say you have to use the service within the time period from purchase. From what it appears after reading the TOS and from what somebody already said (bytre who claims he works at symantic) on this thread its a one time use..... ouch. Still I think it would still be worth it on a severely infected machine. I remember fixing a Sony laptop and afterwards wish I had charged a 100 bucks to fix.. In some cases, its takes some time to undo the messes people make. Lets just say using myspace without any AV/spyware protection would be bad. I guess it would depend on how badly screwed up a system is if this service would be of any value. And there will be many cases I am sure that they will not be able to fix a system when it really needs a clean install. Hopefully if that is needed they would be helpful in walking the user through that process.

 

Andrew makes an excellent point. There are two different ends of the spectrum when it comes to people who visit NotebookReview.com. Most of our regular forums members are very knowledgeable, but we also get a surprising number of visitors who are lucky if they understand more than 50% of what we say in a review.

It's not easy trying to balance the needs of our technical audience and the needs of our less-informed mass audience at the same time.

We still get daily emails to our general email address from people around the world who think we're a laptop store and don't understand the concept that we're a review site that also has links to deals, coupons and stores where you can buy the products we review.

Heck we've even received hand-written letters at our office from people asking for technical support for various computers and accessories. We've even had misinformed individuals ship old laptops to our office thinking we were a company that did notebook repairs. We promptly send everything back exactly the way it came, but the point is that there are people out there who desperately need the type of services NortonLive is willing to provide.

I still believe knowledgeable people (or anyone willing to do some research online) can perform a PC tune-up on their own for free. However, there are people out there who need help.

 

This is a good service for those who don't know or don't have the time to remove malware and speed up their computer. It's just our demographic of forum users tend to be much more computer literate so we poo-poo what Norton is offering.

Plus those that know if you offer to fix family and friends' computers for free, it's almost never a one time only thing. You end up being technical support forever.

It's also somewhat advantageous for Norton to be offering this service remotely since it puts a layer of abstraction up. I'm sure even if you did on-call or worked at a local computer repair place it's difficult to turn away or fend off customers that come back to you with the same problems expecting them to be fixed for basically free.

 

Seriously!?

ROFL!!!

 

That's nothing. We still get at least one email every month from people who accidentally press the "Number Lock" key on their keyboard and are freaked out because they don't know how to switch it back so they can type letters instead of numbers.

We do our best to help everybody.

 

I cannot say I consider myself one of the knowledgable people but all this is so very true...

The thing with the NumLock is a bit extreme but I am sure it has happened!

A (female) friend asked for my help once, very frustrated with a brand new relatively expensive wireless mouse she had bought, because it wasnt working after one week of "trying everything". I was sure she had messed something up with the installation but she had just not switched it on... I still remember her face when I have shown her the switch at the bottom of the mouse.

She would gladly pay the 70$ for this service. Heck even I would do it to save me up the time...