Norton Online Backup
The agent-based approach is refreshing, and multi-PC support is nice too – but it has too many shortcomings
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £40/yr for 5 PCs, 25GB from uk.norton.com
Norton Online Backup doesn’t have a local interface to speak of: all that’s installed on your PC is a lightweight agent that runs in the background. Backup parameters and other actions are handled from the web console, which opens when you double-click on the Norton icon.
In truth, there’s not much to configure: your options divide into three tabs headed “What”, “When” and “Other”. The first of these lets you specify the types of file to back up – such as music, pictures, contacts and so forth – and add or exclude specific files and folders. Under “When” you can switch from continuous protection to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.
Finally, the “Other” tab lets you throttle backups by dragging a slider from “fastest” to “slowest”, although there’s no indication of what the scale really means. You can also enable or disable event alerts and automatic product updates. As feature sets go, it’s rather rudimentary.
One area where Norton is quite versatile, however, is file restoration. From the online console you can send an archive to any connected PC (up to five can be linked to your subscription), directly download individual items or generate a time-limited link enabling others to access selected files.
Sadly, Norton proved to be one of this month’s slowest backup systems. The company doesn’t reveal the location of its data centres, but we suspect they’re not local: it took 7hrs 19mins to upload our 5GB test folder, while some other services managed it in less than two hours. Restoration was slower than it should have been too, taking 53 minutes. If the worst does come to pass, the likes of CrashPlan will rescue your files in half the time.
There’s no support for hybrid local backup, so you can’t speed things up that way, and nor does Norton support sophisticated ideas such as multiple backup sets and custom encryption keys. The real kicker, however, is Norton’s storage allowance. Your £40 annual subscription buys you just 25GB of cloud space: that’s very miserly by modern standards, especially if you want to use the software across multiple PCs. You can buy extra space, but it’s not cheap: going up to 50GB almost doubles the yearly price.
We don’t dislike Norton’s approach, which imposes almost no footprint on your PC. But it’s slow, comparatively lacking in features and expensive for what you get, making it a poor choice overall.