Product Reviews

As a bargain bundle of PC utilities, Symantec's Norton SystemWorks (reviewed issue 53, p201) takes some beating, as it's a first-class collection of applications neatly integrated with minimal duplication across each product. SystemWorks 2000 adds a few useful improvements to the recipe and tightens integration even further, with the standard suite consisting of Norton Utilities 2000, AntiVirus 2000, CleanSweep 2000, CrashGuard 2000and Web Services. The Professional Editionon review also includes disk cloning and Y2K compliance checks with Norton Ghost Personal Edition and Norton 2000 respectively.

Installation is just as smooth as before. You can select individual components,choose the typical version with all the main components or go for the complete option that adds a number of extra tools. These includea Registry Tracker and Editor and a File Compare utility for examining the differences between two file versions. If you want all traces of deleted files removed completely, WipeInfo will write zeros over the selected file location or, if you're really paranoid, the Government Wipe carries out a seven-pass write procedure conforming to methods specified by the US Department of Defence. Hard disk requirements haven't improved much, though, and with the additional utilities you'll now lose 124Mb.

The main interface in earlier versions brought the entire suite under one roof, although it was only used to fire-up each application. This has undergone a radical redesign as it now provides links which allow the different functions of each utility to be accessed directly. Providing all the troubleshooting and testing tools, Norton Utilities is the best known member of the SystemWorks family and now supports hard disk sizes greater than 20Gb. Norton Diagnostics is a new feature that runs a range of system tests on areas such as the motherboard, memory, serial ports, printers and sound cards, although it lacked support for the USB. This also applies to Norton Rescue Disk as the lack of DOS drivers means a boot combo of floppy and Zip or Jaz disk isn't possible with USB devices. System Information provides a full rÚsumÚ of installed hardware. The tests are far more useful as they compare your processor with Pentium 166, Pentium 233 and Pentium II/450 variants as opposed to the 486/33 and associated antiques used in McAfee Office 2000 (reviewed issue 63, p206). A simple improvement to the Internet section means that it no longer reveals your ISP password in plain text.

For virus detection, McAfee VirusScan is a tough act to follow but Norton AntiVirus sees some welcome improvements. An integrated scheduler now allows on-demand scans to be run regularly, email attachments have finally been included in the real-time scanning process and AntiVirus can peer into compressed files and fix infections. AntiVirus had no problems identifying our batch of 55 genuine viruses, but was unable to repair 14 of them. However, as we observed with McAfee Office 2000, this isn't a failing on Symantec's part as some file viruses cause so much internal damage it's safer to restore them from your last clean backup copy.

Although McAfee continues to win the anti-virus software battle,

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it loses out to CleanSweep 2000 as this is still the best uninstaller utility around. Each function can now be accessed directly from the main SystemWorks interface. Along with the ability to move, archive and remove unwanted applications, it offers plenty of tools to clean out Internet clutter such as cookies, browser caches, plug-ins and ActiveX controls.

CrashGuard 2000 is a background task that monitors memory usage and intercepts program crashes by preventing allocated memory from being overwritten. An extra AntiFreeze button is added to the Close Program window that can be used to restart a hung program or close it gracefully to avoid data loss.

Web Services is Symantec's answer to McAfee Oil Change and can reduce time spent Internet browsing by checking for upgrades, patches and new drivers on Symantec's Web site and offering to download and install them. But the list returned for our test PC consisted almost entirely of Microsoft updates along with a pile of shareware toys. Also, you only get six months subscription included in the price and will be charged around £2 per month to continue with Web Services.

As with McAfee's Y2K Toolkit, Norton 2000 will have limited use with the millennium on the horizon. By the time you read this review, you're likely to already know whether your systems and software passed safely into the New Year or burnt up on re-entry. In fact, the rollover to 1 January is only one of a number of dates that need checking, and Norton 2000 runs a complete scan to ensure your system can handle them all. It offers to run LiveUpdate to check Symantec's Web site for Year 2000 specific updates, and scans resident applications and data files for compliance. It picked up on a number of dubious spreadsheets on our test system and impressively listed the co-ordinates of cells containing two-digit years.

For disk cloning, Norton Ghost is a useful tool. If, for example, you want to transport all your data and applications from one PC to another, you can copy a bit-for-bit image of your original hard disk across to the new system instead of reinstalling everything. Ghost also supports removable media such as Jaz and Zip, so you can create images off your hard disk for backup purposes.

As it requires exclusive access to the hard disk, Ghost is best run from the DOS prompt. Source and target hard disks can be on different systems as parallel ports and network links are both supported, but a parallel cable isn't included and you'll need to be familiar with the NetBIOS network protocol, as this must be loaded manually.

Ghost must be loaded on both PCs if you're cloning across separate systems. The main interface is simple to use which is fortunate as Symantec provides only minimal help for this utility. A parallel connection will test your patience - we found it took almost four hours to clone a 1Gb partition. Local cloning is quicker as it took us only 15 minutes to create an image of the same hard disk on a Jaz drive. Having used Ghost for over two years now, we consider it an invaluable tool. Admittedly, we do have a specific purpose for it as we use it to create images on Jaz disks of fresh Windows 95 or 98, Windows NT and Novell NetWare installations for specific systems that can be loaded in a fraction of the time it would take to install them.

Serious users will find Norton SystemWorks 2000 Professional Edition an invaluable utility tool for monitoring and maintaining their PC but, at £90, it's comparatively expensive. However, it does offer a lot more than the McAfee equivalent as Office 2000 Pro only adds the Guard Dog Internet security and PGP encryption tools whereas, along with Norton 2000, SystemWorks includes Ghost - a utility that could prove useful for technical support staff.