Norton 360 is the last of the series of products from Symantec to support Windows Vista, following Norton Internet Security 2007, Norton AntiVirus 2007 and Norton Confidential. According to Amazon.com, Norton 360 will be available as of March 15, 2007, but the e-commerce giant has already begun taking pre-orders.

Symantec has build Norton 360 top as a complete security solution. On top of Windows Vista, Norton 360 will add antivirus and antispyware protection, firewall, intrusion prevention, vulnerability assessment, antiphishing, website authentication, scheduled scans, local backup and restore, online backup and restore, encryption data backup, hard drive defragmentation, hard drive cleanup, integrated support. Symantec has additionally revealed that a single license will support a maximum of three computers.

Norton 360's security features represent an overkill for the limited Windows Live OneCare. Microsoft's own security solution for Windows Vista comes with an antivirus and antispyware scanning engine, antiphishing, firewall, performance tune-ups and backup and restore. And this is reflected in the price.

The financial aspect gives OneCare the upper hand over Symantec. While a three-PC subscription to Norton 360 will come with a price tag of $76.99, OneCare offers the same services for $39.99. After rebates, the products are down to $56.99 - Norton 360 and $19.99 for OneCare.

The bottom line is that for the average consumer, a $19.99 antivirus license for up to three computers will weigh more in the balance in comparison with the sum of Norton 360's features.