Direct From TechProGuild

The feeling toward Norton and Symantec in general has been building for many years. As far as the repairs of these systems where you are having to reinstall the OS, STOP! The OS is fine even after a registry repair or defragment, the issue is still the residual Symantec files, they are still in the system acting like a root kit and must be deleted by logging into a secondary account then manually deleting the files. Then log back into the system as the normal user and run the XP system restore this technique although not elegant by any means has prevented many an OS re-install.

As far as MS and the Live Platform, well lets just say that I have a "Space" on Live and the title includes negative keywords. Which goes for all of the live products especially Defender and I believe they are making a big mistake packing it in Vista with no removal options.

Well I may be late with this comment, but it seems that fixing connectivity issues and possible registry corruption issues after a product has been shipped to millions of unsupecting consumers as well as OEM builders who rely on quality products to sell their systems is also a little late. Maybe the entire thing was designed this way to generate jobs for the unemployed IT personnel to come in and repair these systems for a fee to the consumer or maybe to the OEM builder while Symantec gets over the root kit fiasco in the first place. Seems that when you are intentionally screwing the customer it might come back and bite twice as hard. Maybe they should be next on the SEC's hit list to investigate if they aren't already.

This is all the more reason to accept Microsofts delay in releasing Vista to the public.

I would rather something be late than have to throw it away because it doesn't work.

I have exactly two things to say to this:

1. About 85% of that response is pure marketing BS. The other 15% may or may not be marketing BS — only time will tell.
2. In the year of 2004, from January 1st to December 31st, I worked about seventy billable hours at clients' sites for an IT consultancy doing nothing but fixing problems caused by Symantec software (and desktop support wasn't even my primary work function for the consultancy). Those hours were billed to the clients at a rate of $100 per hour. That means that about seven thousand dollars were paid out for fixing Symantec-caused problems that Symantec technical support didn't fix where I was involved in fixing the problem. Other people at the consultancy did more such work, though I have no idea how much because I wasn't keeping track of the dispensation of their billable hours. I'm sure the total was tens of thousands of dollars spent, however. That doesn't include business productivity losses.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

What a typical reply from a company who's only interest seems to be "buy our latest & greatetest and it will be the best thing for you". The person who crafted the reply would be right at home among the self-serving politicians in office today.

I haven't used a Symantec product eversince NTFS became the norm for SOHO & home use & have suggested to my customers that they shouldn't either because it takes up entirely too much time re-configuring the software so that anything can get done. How self serving and smug the reply is to suggest that the majority of the problem is inept users (the same ones who paid for the product), outdated hardware, and the evolving threat from without. Isn't that what the program is supposed to take into account? I don't hear the same complaints from other major players. I install & reccomend TrendMicro, ZoneAlarm (of course they don't play well together with the latest versions). Either one of these has been terrific in detecton & removal since forever. I can remember when I first became aware of NAV's shortcommings 15 years ago when the viruses were first taking off and a boot sector virus was making the rounds of college campuses. NAV would detect it and do nothing else, not even suggest a manual solution. PC-Cillin just took care of the problem and kept the user trucking down the road.

Isn't it nice what blitz advertising and riding on one's past reputation (the old Norton Utilities) can do to fool the public.

Ok Symantec technical support with a live web chat......a brilliant conception....for the average silly problem like "did not connect to the internet to receive updates" BUT when there is a real problem it is so bad. Twice I had to use it. The guys on the other end were fine. Now wait for this ......You spend 20 minutes explaining your problem....the tech guy says now restart your computer (symantec demands this a lot now when troubleshooting)....you restart. You log into the tech support site again and a new tech guy is there....another 20 minutes explaining the problem....he asks if it still exists......he tells you to uninstall Norton.......NOW HE DISAPPEARS. Open a text editor......copy and paste conversation.....restart.....new tech guy......paste all to screen.....HE consults his advisor......and on and on and on. Oh yeah I twice asked for a tech guys reference number ....there is NONE. you get this "ALL our operators are skilled to deal with any problem you may have" The circle seems endless. Please give up that live chat

Symantec is out the door...They knocked off my service because an employee installed my System Works on her own machine...After re-validating and buying another license, my system was so messed up I couldn't even install the trial anti-virus...Reinstalled the OS and went to AVG...Lost a lot of time and some cash, but, learned a lesson...Don't get married to a product...After a few incidents, cut it loose and move on...

As a computer consultant, I use McAfee to clean the disks of computers "protected" via symantec.  Enough said.

Ms. Garcia-Manrique sounds more like someone from the Public Relations department than Product Management. Her comments blame other issues rather than their software. I cannot believe that all issues with Symantec are systems without sufficient system resources, pre-existing registry faults etc.  I quit using Symantec products about five years ago and will not use them again.

"The fourth option is telephone
support. This service is free for all installation issues and known
bugs."

I had an installation issue with Backup Exec, and the only thing this "free" support could answer me was that my licensenumber was valid. They wouldn't let me talk with techsupport without a paid support-agreement...

I agree with many, if not absolutely all, of the comments made in response to Symantec's PR.  They have simply made their product more trouble than it is worth: the "cure" hurts more than the disease.

I have one question: I have been using Spybot Search and Destroy, not Ewigo, along with AVG and Adaware.  I have had absolutely no problems using that combination.  But can someone tell me how Spybot S&D stacks up against Ewigo?

I've installed both Ubuntu and Kubuntu, from version 5.04 and up.  I use Kubuntu 6.06 right now.  Its not exactly "newbie friendly" (understanding of Linux partitions in particular.  The partitioning tool is a little confusing.), but not impossible either.  I've tried almost a dozen different distributions of Linux, and it is one of the top three for ease of installation (Mepis #1, Sante Fe #2, Ubuntu #3).

My only gripe with it is that all the games should be installed by default!

Blah, Blah, Blah

Although it was nice to see an actual response from Symantec, the response sounded more like a political press junket.  Doesn't sound very sincere, it was almost a sales pitch to get us thinking about their future product line. Thanks but no thanks, not interested. 

It's too bad though.. they obviously put a lot of effort into this response, wouldn't it be nice to see the same effort placed into their existing products? 

Norton Antivirus, no thanks Grisoft's AVG works fine for me and the home version is free!

Norton Internet Security.... what junk, no thanks.  Zonelab's ZoneAlarm is a great product, superior to NIS and the home version is free!

Please if you can do something, get rid of Liveupdate & Livereg, why do these show up as separate installations from the software in the first place.  Other software vendors offer update features built into their software but it doesn't appear as a separate installation.

Norton Antispyware... does this product actually do anything?  Me thinks not, plus why would I pay for this when Spybot, AdAware, MS Defender, SpySweeper and a host of other products do the job about 100% better?

Here's a question, why can't you create a decent antispyware solution, I would have assumed that years of research in  building scanning engines would have provided you with the know how on how to scan for spyware & rootkits and provide ways to find & remove these infections.

I did try one product that I liked a few years ago, Norton Utilities but it seems even that has been ruined by recent versions. 

Symantec, you were the pioneer in this security field years ago, but you've gone and turned a once formidable lineup of software into bloatware which causes system performance & stability issues and on top of that charge a pretty penny for that convenience as well.  And you wonder why Microsoft doesn't want you to provide your software offerings for their next OS release? 

Fool me once, shame on you... Fool me twice shame on me!

Here's an idea that may win you some confidence back.  I challenge you to create a freeware version of Norton Antivirus & Norton AntiSpyware.  Make it work well, remove the bloat, get rid of the liveupdate & livereg separate installation, just incorporate it into the product like the other software vendors can and provide free virus definition & engine updates and make it available for home users/personal use only and make it a really good product, something that people will talk about and recommend to others. In fact make the product do both virus, spyware detection - why should we use separate products for these items? Just classify viruses, spyware & rootkits all under one label malware and call your product a malware removal tool. Keep the installation size small, don't make it a resource hog, make the interface easy to work with (get rid of all that damn yellow), provide the ability to immunize internet explorer with a known blacklist of bad websites, provide a registry backup feature in case the computer does get infected and provide real removal solutions for nasty viruses & spyware, don't provide a link to a knowledge base which requires you to print 10 pages of removal instructions which requires a user to manually edit the registry and manuallyl look for/remove infected reg keys and also make this product function equally well in regular & safe windows mode.  If you're clueless as to how this product would work or look like, download the various antivirus/antispyware software out there and get a clue!   Here's the deal... You've made alot of money over the years selling antivirus solutions to home / personal users that were in actuality more of a problem then a solution.  

Reserve your profit making for enterprise versions of this software if in fact you can make the above product work. Do that and I'm pretty sure you can gather your flock again, until then don't expect any of us to come back anytime soon.

How's that for a response!

What a load of bull. On almost every issue she says it's not our fault but the fault of the operating system, the user or the malware writer, or someone else. For instance:
"It is
standard for threats in the wild to block the installation of security software
so that they can persist on a system"
We all know that but that doesn't explain why Norton often won't install on clean machines.
"Make sure to run
LiveUpdate to get the latest patches if you have experienced a connectivity
problem."
As others have said this comment is this is totally ridiculous.
"Another challenge comes from the general system
instability from older machines"
That doesn't explain why their software makes the latest machines with plenty of resources slow and unstable.
"To address this issue, we have developed a smarter
firewall that does not rely as heavily on user action"
Again it's the stupid users fault not ours!
"In most cases when we
investigate a registry issue ?caused? by Norton SystemWorks, it turns out that
the system suffered from a pre-existing registry problem"
Again, not our fault. Bull Norton causes registry problems full stop no argument.

-We?re reducing the amount of system memory that our products require to
run.

-Our new products will have less running processes when they are not
actively scanning or remediating threats.

-We?re making detection and removal of threats even faster.

-We?re minimizing the amount of impact our products have on system
startup time.

-We?re minimizing the impact on system responsiveness and applications.

-We?re enhancing the adaptability of products to newer technologies.

She talks about these items like they are revolutionary. All software companies should be doing these all the time. It's a shame they have just realised they should be.

Personally I have had so many bad encounters with their products I will never use one again. Their products are not allowed on our company network and will never be allowed on. There are far better products out there that do a better job for less money.

I agree with all the posts critical of Norton. Even if it works properly, it creates a HUGE lag at startup. It is a memory hog. Also, move or rename its start menu folder, and it takes its ball and goes home. It's MY computer, not Norton's. I decide where things go and how they're named.

I'm now using Avast. The home edition is free, it's not a resource hog, and updates itself much more efficiently. And it found boot sector viruse Norton had never heard of.

Pia Holm

Youngerose in the Hudson Valley of NY.

Other than being a hog for resources, I have used Norton for over 7 years and after finally figuring out how to work it, I run this in conjunction with other AV programs and have NO problems.

I definately use it on  ALL installs, and  and run live update manually even though it does not need it.

I prefer Avast for the indepth scanning, but continue using Norton on all my systems, and new installs.

It does find problems that others do not, but even with its quirks, I keep it on hand always.

Youngerose

Well, I have been a faithful user of Norton Products long before Symantec was in the picture, and I was pleased with them.  My Dell 2350 came with NAV 2002, and I have kept my devotion limited to that machine, as the 2006 SystemWorks I upgraded to is a love/hate relationship.  My other 3 systems either have McAfee or AVG, and Zone Alarm for the firewall.  Right now, I only have one connectivity issue, and it is with the Norton-protected PC.  It goes online to the Internet fine; it sees my network, and my network sees it, but cannot talk to it.  Also, I presume it is the Ghost backup program that give me a "C: Access Denied" on every boot-up.

At work, we use a variety of software, but the biggest bloatware is the full NIS installed on my CEO's PC (hey, she did it.. not me).

I truly hope they work to improve the products, and quit trying to compensate for other failings.  Oh, and the marketing shpeel....   just drop it.

I've had the corporate version of Symantec Anti-Virus installed with over 130 licenses since version 8.0.  It worked great at version 8.0.  When version 9 came out, it picked up a perfectly valid piece of software as a threat and quarantined it on over 130 machines.  Needless to say I was a little upset.  It is interesting that this software is a competitor to their PCAnywhere product (Remote Administrator).  I called them, and they recommended disabling the startup scans and the realtime scans.  I asked, "is that really your solution?  Turn your product off and it won't detect that anymore?"  They assured me it would work (of course it will... they obviously missed my point).  I did so because we were in the middle of our licence renewal.  When version 10 came out, there was a facility whereby known threats could be excluded from being picked up.  I once again renewed by licences and got version 10 in hopes that it would solve my problems.  It didn't.  So we're running less than half of the product and paying the whole price.  I am thoroughly disgusted with Symantec's product and will not be renewing my licences again.  Even more disgusting was the support answer of "turn off the scans that are detecting the threat, and it will be OK."  That doesn't fill me with confidence, to be honest.  I will never recommend Symantec corporate again (and I have been telling people to avoid the Norton line of home products for years because of the resource-intensive nature among other things).  I have had to reimage machines before because of Symantec corruption (clean image, install a Symantec client update, computer is fubar....  try to tell me that my system is somehow inadequate or that I am an incompetent user and I will mail back my licence certificate with a nasty word written across it).  Anyway, there are lots of options and this PR spin from them has not changed my mind.

All the while I thought it was only me!  I recently had a problem with 'Live Update'  -  getting it back in operation, through Symantec Tech Support,  was nearly as pleasant  as root canal!. 

After SystemWorks just about trashed my previous computer, you can bet that that's a product I would't touch if it were free!

Insert comment text here

I've been dealing with Symantec softwares for too long to believe anything they say.

It's a shame that people still get conned into buying their products.

The innability of their A/V sofyware to clean anything should be a major concern, quarantines and deletes are all nice and good, but what's the use of having "protection" that ends up forcing you to reinstall anyways? That causes as much damage and downtime as the virus infection itself causes.

I've seen Norton A/V , both the end-user and the corporate versions, "prevent" an infection on a system, only to let the virus propagate itself via email anyways, you'd think that would be stopped, THAT would be a great time to use the "Delete Everything" method they so love.

There are so many better tools on the market to put up with half baked products. I think it's time that those folks who impose those crummy products on the IT community by making decisions based on how big of a corporate rebate Symantec gives out, wake up and smell the coffee: No one saves money when the product doesn't do the job it's supposed to do, in this case protect the systems and keep users productive!!!

I think that you were being too kind.  It has been reported (and is painfully obvious) that Symantec USES root-kit technology to prevent deinstallation of itself -- yet seems to remain blind to other folk's root-kits.  From what I can see Symantec's business culture is based on a series of totally exposed frauds.  If you talk to anyone over there again ask this question:

WHAT IS SYMANTEC DOING TO WORK WITH MICROSOFT TO ALTER THE DESIGN OF WINDOWS ITSELF TO IMPROVE THE SITUATION IN A MEANINGFUL AND FUNDIMENTAL WAY FOR THE USER COMMUNITY?

ALL malware companies have a built-in conflict of interest...the more threat in the wild, the better their business prospects.  Which leads to another question:

WHAT INTERNAL PROCESSES DOES SYMANTEC HAVE TO PREVENT EMPLOYEES FROM RELEASING THREATS INTO THE WILD?

I've been known to say to clients "Symantec AV is a virus that is worse than most of the viruses I have asked it to detect and remove".  100% of the PC's I have visited in the last two years to remove mal-ware had anti-malware software installed and running.  Most of those were Symantec.  ALL the Symantec people were paid up for subscriptions.

Malware: A software process that starts itself on your computer without your permission. 

Permission: An average computer user has granted authority to install and run in a reasonable context.

I have used several different anti-virus products. I will make it clear that my favorite anti-virus product is Trend Micro's solution. Over 2 years ago I changed jobs and my new place of employment uses Symantec Antivirus. I have found Symantec Antivirus to be problematic. The server software becomes corrupted and no patches will be pushed out when this happens. I then have to call Symantec to resolve the problem. I thought that this was just a problem that I was having but as it turns out other network administrators? that I know that work for other companies have had the same issue.

I like that Symantec is addressing a number of issues that I have seen but I do not buy into their idea that pre-existing issues can cause the problems mentioned in previous comments. I have installed Symantec on new clean systems and have had problem immediately.

Symantec still has a ways to go and I will not recommend their anti-virus product for any reason.

My wife had an issue with a renewal to Norton's Internet Security and she used the download version and for awhile it would not take. Then eventually one day it took. My opinion is that it had to wait until the actual expiration date to pass before it would load fully and then install?

I think you forgot who your target audience is here Ms Garcia-Manrique, not just inept users with minumum specification machines that are riddled with malware and registry problems. These are members of Tech Republic, most of us very knowledgeable and skilled in the IT industry.

Not only that, but many are expert consultants, sys admins, net admins, high echelon managers responsible for large user/client bases from dozens up to 1000s of machines. Add to that the fact that this is a community which tends to pass around knowledge, experience, advice, recommendations and (let's say) anecdotes among themselves, you are looking at the top of a pyramid structure that potentially affects a large proportion of your market. The effect will be like a tech version of a chain letter.

If any time was the time to get the response correctly targetted, this was your opportunity, not to come away with PR drivel, aimed at the plebs.

I am afraid you have failed Laura.

Best advice I can give you now, is to update your CV or Resume.

Laura should get in touch with the real world.  I agree with all of the attached comments.  Norton products used to be top notch.  Not any more.  I tell my clients NEVER to use Norton Internet Security or System Works.  I have uninstalled or rebuilt so many computers with these applications installed just to get computers useable again.   

I had a client in a small office using Norton A/V and Sympantec WinFAX Version 10.03.  The client wanted to update to Windows XP Pro SP2 from Windows 2000.  I found that FAX Sharing would not work when SP2 was installed. Also the Internet Worm Protection feature had to be disabled for FAX Sharing to work with Windows 2000.  I spent many many hours trying different setups tpet these three programs to work.  They said that there was a version 10.04 fix Created about 6 months ago for WinFAX Pro which made things worse ie:  WinFAX uninstall disappeared in Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel.  To uninstall WinFAX Pro Version 10.04 meant an hour of Registry editing.  

Techsupport was a absolute disaster.  There was a language issue and I had to repeat my self many times.  If it was not in their Knowledge base, level one support was lost.  I knew more than some of their tech's.  I had already applyed all recommended fixes found in the Knowledge base.  Level two support was no better.  They took information and always promised to get back to me in 24 hrs.  They never did, and then seemed to lose my information.  They said that they were escalating to Level three but I never got a response back.  There is a user group with many users with the same problem.  No one at Symantec acknowledged that this was a problem and that they did not have a fix for it. 

I lost this business as a client because I was spending to much time with out a solution to the problem.  Thanks Symantec.

Norton causes problems!!??  McAfee has caused my PC to almost cease running!!

I had Norton before and switched to McAfee.  That was a big mistake on my part.

I am sure most of the problem is due to the age of my PC and it's old operating system.  Win98.

BUT - I had Norton before and had no problems.

So where do I go now that all of you have posted concerns about Norton???

Insert comment text here

I have so many problems with the livedate, I will look for better software when my subscription is done.  No matter what I do when I try to do a liveudate is is alredy running but I don't get updated!

Well I am not going to add in tech area but I would like to say the attitude to look at technology has not changed in last 25 years. In fact it has not changed for centuries. I still remember a quote when steam engine pulled rail racks. It says something like this: ?A huge monster making horrible noise and puffing out smoke and steam rolled past the town at blistering speed of 10 miles an hour. We don?t know how many accidents there will be when such a huge things runs at that speed and effect of mass transport on the cobblers and wagons pulled by horses and unemployment of riders.?

At the same time when I look back I feel the Smartmodem should be rated much higher for contribution of internet than PC?s. The reason is simple: they used existing technologies and adapted themselves to a technology which was in place and standards set in for just 5 years away from completing its centenary ? telecom technology. For a common user - ITU had made sure that you connect any telephone anywhere in the world and it will get dial tone, dial out a number in any language, will ring at the receivers end and talks to the person at the other end. By connecting a modem with firm standard set of AT commands hays have seen that they connect the world on top of something which is already in place.

Unfortunately, after so much of talk about open source and technological marvels we still a technician to make two PCs? to talk to each other.

Satish Hulyalkar
Pune/India

Hey John,

You kind of overlooked the other main contribution of the Osborn 1.  When this machine came out, the really revolutionary thing about it was that they bundled applications software with it.  Before that, portable computers, like their desk-bound counterparts, were not much more than big-fat paperweights until you bought software to go with them.  What Adam Osborn did was provide a tool that was actually usable out-of-the-box.  I think they came with the whole MicroPro suite of programs - WordStar, CalcStar (spreadsheet) and some other apps that I dont remember. 

It's true they were portable (we called them "Luggables" back in the day), but as you mentioned, they still needed AC so they weren't really usable on planes or elsewhere.  I feel that their contribution was bundled software and Adam Osborn was the father of it.

Ahhhhh the good ole' days!  I miss em'.

Howard

One of Louisville Kentucky?s largest employers is UPS ? United Parcel
Service. UPS, of course, is famous for its brown trucks and the ability to
deliver just about any package you want, anywhere on the globe you want. When
you put a UPS in your server room, the hope is that it will continue to deliver
power when the power company can?t. 

Recently, I got a call from a company I?ve done consulting
for. They?ve been having intermittent power problems and the main breaker to
the building has been blowing out. Even though my grandfather started his own company
as an electrician over 50 years ago, the wiring wasn?t what they called me
for. Instead it was the server that kept crashing.

When the company purchased its new server system, the vendor
was smart enough to recommend a UPS for the system. The customer told me the
server however would go right out when the power went out, even though the UPS
was less than a year old.

I suspected it just might not be plugged in properly. Often
people will plug equipment into the Surge Only line of a UPS and not use the
battery-backup side. Instead what I found was something completely different.

It turned out the vendor was smart enough to supply a UPS,
just a very tiny one. Supporting a Dell PowerEdge 1420, a flat panel display,
router, hub, and fiber optic hub was a puny APC 350. Not only that, there was
no connection between the UPS and the server. So, after about 3 minutes when
the battery was exhausted, rather than elegantly shutting the system down, the
entire thing came to a crashing halt.

This is one of the things I?ll never understand about some
consultants. Here the vendor had suggested and recommended a system that was
worth over $5000 at the time, and they protected it with a $40 UPS. And they didn?t
even bother to hook it up properly when they did. What are some people thinking
sometimes?

Wow, lots of indecision.
I've tried a few. I think I've settled on SuSE 10.0 pro + Packman. (10.1 made some changes which actually added issues like with CD autoloading)

Why: SuSE 10.0 is stable, quick/efficient, and the setup is both easy and flexible (Gnome, KDE, something else? Your choice). It does however remove some of the media compatibility that was present in earlier versions, which is where Packman comes in. Adding a Packman install source gives you back programs like MPlayer which in turn returns DVD playback functionality (though you still have to nab libcss elsewhere for commercial DVDs). Since Yast is able to add any amount of install sources (some of which may contain content Novell doesn't want to be legally responsible for on their servers) and automatically solve dependencies across all available sources, it's rare that you have to manually make or install anything. Also, being a Novell product, it is choice where networking is of primary concern.

You?ve probably noticed the ads that we have running on TechRepublic.
(At least our advertisers hope you have.) Likewise, almost every site on the Internet
employs some form of banner or graphical ad unit to help pay the bills and keep
the data bits flowing. Clearly the most annoying form of advertising is the
infamous pop-up ad which gets in your face and insists you clear it before you
can continue doing what you?re doing.

But, recently I?ve noticed a type of ad which is even more
annoying and irritating than the pop-up ad. And for a change it?s not online.

What I?m talking about are roaming billboards. These are
rotating ads that are mounted on the trailer area of panel trucks. They?re
motoring equivalent of the old sandwich board ads that people used to use to
tell you to ?Eat At Joe?s?.

There used to just be one in town, but today I noticed
another one. It was painted an obnoxious tree-frog green with rolling ads. Don?t ask me what the ads were for, because I
was too annoyed with the concept.

Advertising has its place. I might be a bit biased, but contextual
advertising like we do here on TechRepublic can actually be useful. If you?re
reading about VOIP in an article online, it can be helpful to jump to an
advertiser?s site to see some of the products they have. But when I?m driving down the road, I don?t need
a truck in front of me with a spinning picture of the local ambulance chaser.
The only reason I?d need that is if I happen to get rear-ended by the person
behind me who?s also distracted by the thing.

I?m not a tree hugger by any means, but I find rolling
billboards on the backs of trucks belching fumes and consuming hundreds of
gallons of diesel at $3 a gallon as being socially irresponsible. About the
only use I find for them is to figure out the vendors to NOT purchase from. I?m
not going to patronize and encourage anyone to use such an advertising
technique.

What?s next? Are we all someday going to be driving down the
roads in cars that look like they?ve just driven off of a NASCAR track?

Well whatever other comments say, most of the stuff you mentioned was unknown to me before. Thanks for giving this information.[http://blog.talkncafe.com ]

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know just by emailing
me.

 Ms Garcia-Manrique's reply is pure BS. When Peter Norton was around his products were the best there were. Symantec's products have become pure junk. I can't tell you the number of hours I have spent trying to resolve problems caused by their software. I use to put system works on all of my clients machines, today I tell all my clients to stay away for their products at all costs. It's a shame to see a fine product sink to the level of system works. Symantec needs to clean house of excutives who don't know how to produce a quality product or how to take care of customers. I don't think they will ever get any more of my business.

JAL KJB Computer Services

I?ve noticed the same trend (No pun intended) with Symantec software. I?m currently dealing with trying to install NIS 2006 and receiving the error message 9999.171. Looking at Symantec?s web site is of no help & trying to talk to them is even less helpful. I?ve pointed many of my clients toward Symantec and I?m having second thoughts now.

I?ve run their uninstall program, used regedit to remove ?Symantec & Norton? entries and manually deleted folders from Program Files to no avail. I?ve got one or two bullets left to shoot and after that it?s TrendMicro.

John

I speak from both the enterprise (600+ node multinational network, single/same major hardware manufacturer) and home user levels when I say I respectfully disagree w/Ms Manrique's comments and position.  As many have noted in multiple forums across the web, the Symantec product and support have been on the downward side of a very slippery slope.  My experience w/Peter Norton's software goes back to the days of DOS.  He, w/out a doubt, was putting out some of the best reasonably priced utilities that money could buy.  Consistently, year after year.  That all came to an end when Symantec bought the rights to his products.  Since that point, the products have been slipping at a rate measurable in magnitudes.  Each successive version injects more problems.  Just w/in the past year we'd had several major outbreaks in the enterprise because SAV was unable to detect the involved virus.  Tech support was not of much (if any) help.  So unresponsive/slow that we'd isolate the infected pc's via the firewall/routers.  Then, go to the web.  Discover the source and removal process.  My experience has been that Symantec's update service is slow to respond to new threats.  Quite frequently other virus software manufacturers have web information and new viruse definitions available long (days to week, or more) before Symantec.

As a home user my experience is just as bad, if not worse.  Symantec products have been notoriously noted to introduce system instability.  Symantec uninstall routines do not.  It's necessary to use a Symantec fix to clean the registry of Symantec entries.  Then, manually delete the Symantec directories before even thinking about a reinstall.  My experience has been that once Symantec has been installed, other multiple registered software applications (Roxio in particular) suddenly start a reinstallation process when launched.  I'm not singling out SAV.  As I've had similar experiences both w/other previously installed registered software and Symantec products (Ghost, Internet Security, etc).  Symantec is really messing w/the registry.  To the point that the only way to clean things up has been a couple rebuilds from the OS up.

Several years ago at work we changed the enterprise software from McAfee to Symantec for these very reasons.  At home my experiences w/McAfee haven't been much better then Symantec.  One thing, tho, which is especially annoying is the dumbing down of the user interface and options by McAfee.  The advanced, or technical, user has fewer available options and control then before.  At work, corporate policy is slow to change.  In particular w/the costs and efforts associated in making enterprise wide software changes.  At home, my attitude has changed from using an 'all in one' software has changed to use the most appropriate app.  Even if means separate pgm's are necessary.  Licensed copies of ESET and Zone Alarm are doing quite well at protecting the home network computers.  I do have to admit tho, PowerQuest's Partion Magic is occasionally needed.  However, it's a pre-Symantec copy and it works quite well - thank you!

As for me, and mine, Symantec (likely McAfee too) will not be installed on a pc in this house.

I just bought a new mid priced pc . I was prompted to update symantec, so I did, that was a mistake. Now my pc is slow,  locks up, and startup takes forever. You're right, symantec has some serious issues!  

As a consequence of the way-too-many problems with Symantec's anti-virus software I have removed it from my company's LAN, all of our laptops, my personal PC and laptop.

In addition, I am considering dumping Symantec's Backup Exec from our server . . . too many problems to list here.

I've had similar issues with Symantec lately.

I left McAfee for Symantec and might consider going back.

The other day I was helping out TechRepublic-Editor-turned-Computer-Troubleshooters-consultant
Erik Eckel at one of his customer?s sites. Erik was installing a new Windows Server
2003 SBS server and needed some help with a particularly tricky network
installation. While we were finishing the installation, I noticed a nifty
little device attached to the server that Erik was using for backups ? an
Iomega Rev drive.

This is a device much similar to the old Iomega Zip and
Iomega Jaz drives. It?s basically a cartridge drive that you can attach to your
server or workstation to hold data. Whereas the old Zip drives were limited to
100Mb and the Jaz to a few gigabytes, the Rev drives come in 35Gb and 70Gb
flavors ? enough for most workstations and small servers. There?s even a 320Gb
option for larger servers.

All in all, it looked like a pretty nice piece of equipment. It?s
a faster alternative to tape backups and smaller than a portable hard drive. Iomega
has been creating devices like this ever since the ancient Bernoulli Box. I
haven?t had the chance to play with one directly, so I might have to hit Iomega
up for an evaluation unit.

As hard drives get bigger on workstations and servers,
backing them up become increasingly problematic. Tape sizes and speeds are
having a hard time keeping up, and having redundant spare drives can get pricey
as well. Give me some good alternatives for fast portable backup storage.

I was looking back through some of my old blog
entries today and noticed something I had forgotten about. Back in January
of this year, I mentioned how I
had just gotten and installed a copy of eComStation
1.2. I also noticed how I hadn?t posted any updates about how I?ve been
getting along with it.  That should be
SOME type of an indication right there I guess.

For those of you that have never heard of it, eComStation, also known as eCS, is
essentially an OEMed version of IBM?s OS/2 Warp operating system. Serenity
Systems has updated Warp with a bunch of new features and worked hard to clean
up the code in many places. As an old time Warp user, I looked forward to
installing and using eCS on a regular basis. It installed like a charm and
worked well. Serenity Systems included enough applications for it that it would
serve as a passable Windows replacement operating system.  The problem is, I just haven?t used it very
much.

I reread that entry and could feel the sense of glee and
anticipation I had about getting the chance to use an updated version of Warp,
but quite frankly, I haven?t spent more than a week using it after I had it
installed.

I installed it two places: on an old HP Kayak and on an old
HP Omnibook.  Because they were older
units, they?d serve as a good baseline for comparison because OS/2 was
originally designed to run on much less hardware, so eCS should have performed
admirably on them.  It did so, and
continues to do so on the Kayak. It?s humming away under my cube right now.

The Omnibook was a different matter entirely. OS/2 never did
work well with notebooks, and even though the base machine runs well, I could
never get the PCMCIA drivers to talk to the network card. In today?s world, a
PC without network or Internet access is pretty much a paperweight, which is
what I wound up using the hard drive I installed eCS on the laptop for until I
installed Ubuntu Linux over it.

Since then, I?ve been using SuSe Linux as my Windows
alternative OS of choice. It?s limiting enough using an alt-OS in a Windows network,
and SuSe was just better at doing some things than eCS is. One minor example:
we use YM here at TechRepublic to communicate with each other. SuSe can run
Yahoo?s client natively. With eCS you had to use a Java program called Jeti
which works with Jabber. There are dozens of other examples where I just had to
make too many compromises to keep using eCS.

So for now, eCS is still installed on one of my
test machines. When I feel truly nostalgic for OS/2, I have that running on a
test machine at home. Even that, I don?t think I?ve booted in 6 months. For
their part, Serenity Systems is working on a new version of eCS called eComStation
2.0.  Where this fits in the grand
scheme of things -  Windows Vista, Mac OS
X, Linux, et al - it?s hard to tell. I might look at 2.0 when it comes out, but
for me, I think I?ll save some power and shut off the eCS machine for the last
time.   

Yesterday, the European Union antitrust chief went on the
record denying that the EU was seeking a vendetta against Microsoft in its
ongoing battle with the company over alleged anticompetitive practices. I say
that the EU isn't nearly as interested in innovation and competitive choice in
Europe as it is of picking the pocket of a big bad American company.

The EU's behavior clearly indicates it's more interested in
fines and money than it is in truly fixing the 'problem' of Microsoft
dominating the software industry. The EU had settled with Microsoft over the
issue of opening up Windows APIs and bundling Windows Media Player in Windows
XP. On two occasions since the 2004 agreement, the EU has fined Microsoft
nearly a total of $1 billion. Since then the company and the commission have gone back and
forth about how Microsoft is supposed to 'behave' in Europe ? to the point
where Windows Vista may be delayed in Europe to satisfy the government.

Now, I'm not saying for one second that Microsoft is an
innocent victim here. From the days when it redesigned DOS 2.1 with the motto
"DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run", Microsoft has a long storied
history of playing hard ball with its competition. Consider some ofthe
evidence:

1. Netscape's browser being driven off the road of the
   information superhighway by an integrated Internet Explorer.
2. OS/2 crashing and burning due to admittedly illegal bundling
   agreements with OEMs preventing IBM from getting OS/2 preloaded on new
   computers.
3. The blatant rip-off of drive compression technology from
   Stacker when it wouldn't sign a licensing agreement with Microsoft for DOS 6.0.
4. Modifying underlying Windows 95 code to display errors when
   DR-DOS was installed on a workstation.
5. Creating undocumented system calls in its operating systems
   that its own applications could use to run more smoothly than competitors.

Clearly, Microsoft plays rough and will cut corners when it
deems necessary to get a competitive advantage. Put Bill Gates in a ten-gallon
hat, and he'd be the software equivalent of J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame.

The issue with the EU however isn't so much what Microsoft
has done wrong. It's what to do about it. The EU claims that sanctions in the
form of a billion dollars worth of fines over two years can help change the
competitive mind of a monopolist. Nevermind the fact that the fines leveled in
two years can be recovered by Microsoft in about two weeks. It's nothing more
than another cost of doing business at that rate. (Interestingly enough, the EU thinks that sanctions can work against
a monopolist seeking profit, but not a nation seeking nuclear weapons. But I digress...)

A non-technological analogy can be found in the
National Tobacco Settlement here in the US. In 1998, the tobacco industry agreed
to pay over $200 billion dollars over 25 years to states to help them 'recover'
the money they lost from the health care costs incurred by states as a result
of cigarettes. The states claimed they were interested in the public's health.
They claimed they wanted to help prevent smoking by hitting tobacco companies
in the wallet. Many states wound up spending the money on things other than
health care and smoking cessation programs. They proved that they were more
interested in the money they could get out of the tobacco companies rather than the true problem which
was smoking. They could use the cover of Big Evil Tobacco and the evils of
smoking to feather their treasuries.

The exact same thing is happening here. The EU (and now
other countries like South Korea) are looking at Big Evil Microsoft and its
questionable business practices and see a goldmine. They can self-righteously
attack a foreign company all in the name of innovation and smaller weaker
competition, while at the same time doing nothing to help the true 'victims'.
With a touch of demagoguery, they laugh all the way to the bank.

The proof? The EU won't give Microsoft clear guidelines
about what it can and can't do in Vista. Instead, it's waiting to leap out and
play gotcha after the fact. The fines aren't used by the EU to help offended
competitors. Real Networks may be used as cover, but they aren't seeing a dime
of the results. Neither is anyone else. And no 'innovation' has come from the
fines, except maybe from lawyers who are fighting the battles.

Government 'action' such as this won't solve the 'problem' of
Microsoft's domination. Smoking has decreased over time as a result of the
choices people have made, not as a result of money being siphoned to the
government. Likewise, Microsoft won't change its practices nor will its
domination end until consumers make different choices. 2007 will be an
important year for Microsoft with the shipment of Vista and Office 2007. And
for the first time, there will be serious competition in the form of Linux, Mac
OS X, and OpenOffice just to name a few.

The EU Commissioner said "Far from pursuing a vendetta
against Microsoft, the Commission's actions are guided by the desire to create
the most innovation-friendly business climate in Europe to the ultimate benefit
of European consumers." How again do European consumers benefit from
fines? By the higher prices caused by delays and the cost of the fines being
passed along to the consumer? You create an 'innovation-friendly business
climate' by attacking one business, but only reaping the rewards yourself and
not helping those who you're saying are being harmed? Changing the rules midstream, or not clearly defining the rules to begin with. and then sanctioning the offender?

If the EU was serious about the 'problem',
they'd place stiffer penalties on the company that would do some real damage or
even seek to break them up. Maybe they'd do like Massachusetts and get
Microsoft's attention by setting purchasing rules (in the form of OpenDoc
format support) which forced people to make software choices other than
Microsoft. At the very least they would issue some clear guidelines about the features in Vista and other Microsoft business practices that they don't like so Microsoft can do something proactively about it.

But they're not serious. They're not truly interested in competition
nor innovation. All they're interested in is an easy way to make a buck ? or a
euro. If it comes at the expense of a big American company, so much the better. That kind of sounds like a vendetta to me.

For several months now, I?ve been hinting
at changes that are coming to TechProGuild. TPG isn?t alone in facing some
new changes. TechRepublic itself will be undergoing a bit of a transformation
in the near future.

Change can be stressful, but often times it?s good. It?s way
too easy set in your ways and after a time you take your eye off the ball. You
keep doing things the way you always have because, well, that?s the way you?ve
always done it. It just seems to work,
so you don?t go back and revisit things.

But once in a while you get a chance to stop, take a look and
make something which is more focused, makes more sense, and is all around
better. That?s what we think we?re doing with TechProGuild. But of course, I
can?t tell you too much about it now, because that would just spoil the
surprise, wouldn?t it?

Here's a sneak
preview of TechRepublic's upcoming site design. Check out our plans for the
new look and feel, and let us know what you think. Pay close attention and you may notice an
upcoming change to TechProGuild.

Ford was famous for selling the Model T in any color you
wanted, so long as it was black. The original IBM PC came with any CPU you
wanted, so long as it was an Intel 8088. Today, just as you can get a car in
just about any color you want, it seems like there?s an almost endless array of
CPU options. Intel and AMD are competing so hard and introducing new product so
fast, that it?s next to impossible to keep up.

Consider some of your options
from Intel alone. Just on the desktop, from the Intel Celeron D to the Core
2 Extreme you can choose from 7 different CPU types. Within the Pentium D
processor family, there are 12 different speeds. That?s not counting the
additional 6 additional mobile processor, 6 server processor families and the
number of flavors of each.

With AMD,
it?s not any less confusing. AMD has 4 different desktop processor families and
5 for mobile computers. At least there's only one choice when it comes to
servers, but when you look at one model line like the Athlon 64 X2 dual-core
CPU, there are 13 individual flavors of the CPU.

PC makers such as Dell and HP help somewhat by making most of
the choices for you. They don't offer every single CPU choice in their models.
Even when you have the option of customizing the CPU in a unit, you only have
limited selection of CPUs. This helps minimize the confusion somewhat, but you
still need to know the difference in CPU types when comparing models from
different makers. Like hard drive sizes, amount of RAM and video card
selections, CPUs are now included in the 
pricing shell game. By shuffling components around a little, one
manufacturer can 'match' the price of another's machine, but the performance
may differ wildly.

This is where it comes in handy to standardize your purchases
for your organization. Pick an individual model that meets your needs and then
forget about it. Buy as many of those units as possible, and then start the
process over again next year.

Personally, I find the constant change in CPUs to be a mixed
blessing. It's next to impossible to remember all of the different CPU types
like you could way back in the 20th Century. But at the same time,
processors are increasing speed at an exponential rate. Who would want to remember some of them?        

Same obsevations here,

Had lots of Symantec stuff installed on 500+ computers.

I loved the Norton tools, some of them where brilliant! Norton Disk editor, Norton Utilities, Norton Disk Doctor, Be.exe, Ncd.exe, Nav, Norton Ghost.exe, Ghost for Netware. Gifts from heaven. Stable, usefull, state-of the art power tools. For many years I was one of the most loyal Norton customers one can think of. The realy earned my trust and loyalty.

But then Symantec came..

Since 2002 Symantec is an expert in messing up good software. The results: Bloated, instable, ill-behaving, below mediocre software that causes more troubles than it solves, and grind many pc's to a crawl. After many many many lost hours and lots of desparation I ditched all those fancy looking bulgy bell's and whistle's and aside Ghost.exe (the last 2003 version 'dos' tool, later versions are fu*ed up allso) every shred of Symantec's rubbish is gone now.

My life as a head of a IT department gained so much quality after that decision!

Nod32 protects my systems so much better! No false positives, no more misses, no blue screens, no instabilities, no slowing down, no long and painstaking installations/removeals, no more expensive calls to India, no Ram Bulimia, no hours of Symantec knowledge base research, no sickening update and script errors. And as a bonus it is much cheaper, especially in large amounts.

Remote Admin replaces PcAnywhere. Same story here: M?ch cheaper, stable, unbelievable faster, lightweight, safer. It all install's and de?nstalls like a charm in seconds, without leaving ton's of rubbish in my systems, and it performs. Did I mention that this software performs?

You have done a great job in chasing me away, Symantec. No more Symantecware for my department -and my customers- anymore. If I see this S-word software on a computer my first advise is: Please replace it and get happy!

You have done your outmost best to get rid of the power users and IT pro's. Shame on you S, that a once so loyal customer has to say this.

Michel Uphoff
Netherlands

Sorry Symantec, too late now..

For many years I had heaps of Symantec software installed on 500+ computers. Costed a little fortune, but it was worth every dollar.

I loved the Norton tools, some of them where brilliant! Norton Disk editor, Norton Utilities, Norton Disk Doctor, Be.exe, Ncd.exe, Nav, Norton Ghost.exe, Ghost for Netware. Gifts from heaven. Stable, usefull, state-of the art power tools. For many years I was one of the most loyal Norton customers one can think of. Norton realy earned my trust and loyalty.

But then Symantec came, and everything changed for the worse. The first sign was the ditching of a very promising new tool, Ghost for Netware. "By management decision".

Since 2002 Symantec seems to be an expert in messing up good software. The results: Bloated, instable, ill-behaving, mediocre software that often causes more troubles than it solves, and grind pc's to a crawl. After many many many lost hours and lots of desparation I ditched all those fancy looking bulgy bell's and whistle's and aside Ghost.exe (the last 2003 version 'dos' tool, later versions are a PITA) every shred of Symantec's rubbish is gone now.

My life as a head of a IT department gained so much quality after that decision!

Nod32 protects my systems so much better! No false positives, no more misses, no blue screens, no instabilities, no slowing down, no long and painstaking installations/removeals, no more expensive calls to India, no Ram Bulimia, no hours of Symantec knowledge base research, no sickening update and script errors. And as a bonus it is much cheaper, especially in large amounts.

Remote Admin replaces PcAnywhere. Same story here: M?ch cheaper, stable, unbelievable faster, lightweight, safer. It all install's and de?nstalls like a charm in seconds, without leaving ton's of rubbish in my systems, and it performs. Did I mention that this software performs?

You have done a great job in chasing me away, Symantec. No more Symantecware for my department -and my customers- anymore. If I see your software on a computer my first advise is: Please replace it and get happy.

You have done your outmost best to get rid of the power users and IT pro's. It's a shame that a once so loyal customer has to say this. No, I won't use Symantec software for the years to come. But maybe Symantec changes, and starts to make real good software again. After they have proved to do so for a few years, I will reconsider.

The only positive thing I can add, is that NIS 2007 seems to push a little less hard on computers breaks, and symantec isn't the only company that excells in slowing down a nice computer. See image.

One of the nice things about working for a company like
TechRepublic is the fact that you get to play with the latest toys. We get to
play with early betas of software like Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Longhorn
Server. Vendors like to send us their latest hardware to evaluate and review
such as my experience with Lenovo?s
Tablet PC, and Mark Kaelin?s latest adventure with an AlienWare
laptop. 

Rather than focusing all of our attention on what?s ?new and
cool? however, we often like to make sure that what we?re running in the
TechRepublic Test Lab echos what you?re using on your network. We?ve got
Windows 2000 servers, Windows 2003 Servers, even a couple of Linux and NetWare
servers humming away.

Occasionally however, we get the opportunity to go old
school. Today, I just finished up installing DOS and Windows 3.1 on a
workstation in the test lab. Why on Earth you wonder? 

You?ve probably noticed some of our Dinosaur
Sightings Photo Galleries on TechRepublic. 
Bill Detwiler, Mark Kaelin and I thought it would be fun to load up some
old PC games and take some images of them as well as older PC software. The
best place to start was back in the 80?s and early 90?s with good old DOS and
Windows 3.1.

We set up an old Dell Dimension XPS350 to run the system. It
took about 45 minutes to get the DOS and Windows installation complete, but
most of that was just feeding floppies in and out of the machine. No CD-ROM
installation here ? it?s 1993 all over again. The only CD-Rom installation we
did was to put Microsoft Office 4.3 on the system ? Word 6.0, Excel 5.0,
PowerPoint 4.0 and Access 2.0.

It?s amazing how fast Windows 3.1 on a PII 350 is.  The machine boots into Windows in less than
10 seconds. When you click an application like Word or Excel, there is NO
delay. Bang ? it?s there.  After running
XP and Office 2003, as well as kicking around Vista and Office 2007 on a
machine 10 times as fast, the difference is practically night and day.

Keep an eye out for some new articles and galleries that hearken
back to the late 20th Century.  New stuff is fun to play with, but sometimes
it?s good to remember where you?ve been to see where you?re going clearly.