Software : Norton AntiSpam 2004

Rating: - Norton nightmare
As an anti-spam device I suppose it was effective, but only because it prevented Outlook Express from downloading any email. It also introduced instabilities in Internet Explorer and made the computer liable to crash. The automated help on the Symantec website was no use at all. After paying Symantec good money to damage my computer you can imagine I wasn't prepared to pay for technical assistance for them to try and fix it. From reading other comments on the internet I seems that the program does work for some people, but there are also many who share my bad experience. I'm afraid I've lost interest in trying to make it work after 2 weeks. My previous faith in Symantec products has gone. Only one good thing about this product, it did uninstall cleanly, and all the problems went with it! Buy something else!

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Rating: - If it actually worked, it'd be a great product. Disappointed
This has to be the most disappointing Norton product I've bought. Norton Antivirus etc are great - but this product has been a disaster, and I've had to turn it off to make email usable.

Echoing another review on this site, Antispam was good for about a week. Then things started going wrong. Email download became very slow - emails apparently were queueing up to the spam analysis process, and nothing was appearing in the Inbox or the Spam folder. Breaking out of this appears to have meant lose emails.

A couple of weeks later, Outlook started spewing "Not enough memory to display this [message/reminder/window/whatever]" errors. I couldn't even list the email in my Inbox, let alone open them. My RAM is fine - and amazingly enough, as soon as I disabled antispam, the error went. I also spent some time with the wonderful "Outlook crashes when you click the 'This is Spam' button" bug. Quality - although allegedly now fixed.

I've had enough of this product. I'm an experienced Windows user with an MCSE, and my system runs well - with the exception of Antispam. I won't be looking out for Antispam2005, I can tell you. Based on my experience, my advice is "Stay well clear".

[For reference: OfficeXP, WinXP, AthlonXP2000, 512MB RAM]

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Rating: - Great at first then a disaster
As I already had Norton Internet Security (2002) installed, I thought this would integrate nicely. It did as well.

For the first three weeks it operated effortlessly, only missing a few Spams (and I was getting 150 Spams a day) and not mis-identifying correct emails. Then suddenly it all started to go wrong. At first, when I tried to tell it a message was Spam, Outlook Express would hang in mid air, and I would have to restart OE.

This wasn't too bad, I could cope with it as it only happened occasionally.

But then it got worse. It couldn't cope with some very simple spam and would refuse to analyse it, while there was a backlog of emails behind it. The only solution to this is to turn off the AntiSpam, CTRL ALT DELETE your way out of Outlook Express (4 times) and then restart OE while hovering over the 'stop' button in order to stop it downloading the whole of the backlog before restarting Norton Antivirus. Of course, sometimes there would be more than one of the spams that it couldn't deal with and you would have to do the whole process all over again. When this happens several times over 4 email accounts, it becomes exasperating.

In the end I decided to try another antispam program as this product was becoming increasingly difficult to live with. Its a shame because I have experienced no problems with any other Norton programs.

I believe from internet searches that it is not just me experiencing these problems.

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Rating: - Spam,spam,spam and spam-not any more!
I use XP,Outlook Express and broadband.Antispam is an excellent bit of software and does just what it says on the tin.My 50+ spams a day have been reduced to virtually nothing almost from installation,which itself was easy.The familiar Norton interface is easy to use and the programme easy to configure and update.It blocks adware and pop-ups too.

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Rating: - As good as expected
Very user friendly and easy to configure and I have not noticed any performance impact when using it. The downside is that it doesn't work AT ALL. Not in the slightest. I receive roughly 150 spam emails per day. I have had it running for a week, and it has identified precisely 0 messages. I have it on the highest setting and every spam email that has arrived I have identified on its behalf as spam, but still nothing. I didn't expect too much from it, but was rather hoping for a success rate somewhere above 0%.