My laptop came with a 90-day free trial (trial by fire) of Norton Internet Security 2007. The 90 days had expired recently. My retail copy of NIS '07 (as used on my desktop) allows installation on three systems. So I'm all set.
I thought that I might be able to simply punch in the replacement product key, but the screen where this happens is expecting four digits per group (the key on the CD sleeve is five digits per group). In other words, you can't simply punch in the new key. So I had to do a fresh installation.
I did the fresh installation at a location that had a wireless hot-spot (not at home using dial-up). The installation went smoothly, but...
IT TOOK ABOUT ONE AND ONE-HALF HOURS (not including the scans).
The actual installation ground away for more than 30 minutes. Then I had to run LiveUpdate about EIGHT TIMES (often including a restart) before it finally reported that it was up-to-date. I don't know exactly how much it downloaded, but the first was more than 26MB, and there were others that were 9MB. If I had to guess, it downloaded almost 50 MB of updates.
Remember, the trial version of exactly the same software was already up-to-date when I started the new installation. The installation routine wasn't smart enough to preserve the data files. It isn't a failure, but you'd think that they might actually plan the product so that the real-world application would be more efficient.
The installation time is incredible. The amount of downloaded updates is incredible. Even with high speed Internet, it is still a huge exercise.
If I had attempted this from home (using dial-up) it would have taken days...
Not a good product.
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