No More Symantec Products For Me

[Jerry Jones]

I have to reformat and reinstall Windows... thanks to Symantec's buggy products.

I wasted my money on two Symantec products:

1. Norton Ghost;
2. Norton Internet Security.

Never again.

I've purchased two alternatives that I think will run circles around the Symantec products.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[paulw]

I've never had any problems with Ghost. I still use Ghost 2003 but I wouldn't touch any of their internet stuff . Same goes for McAfee.

[Jerry Jones]

I just finished throwing my relatively new "Ghost 10" into the trash.

After installing it, I would restart my computer and then be mystified by a pop-up message informing me that Ghost "could not connect to the service" -- whatever that means.

I visited the Symantec tech support and they advised downloading driver software from GEAR, claiming that would fix the problem.

It didn't.

Meanwhile, I started getting all kinds of strange Windows messages.

Very frustrating.

I've switched to Acronis True Image 10 Home.

No errors.

With Norton Internet Security, my system slowed to a crawl and I would periodically get a message indicating that the software was no longer working and would need to be uninstalled and then reinstalled.

When I get software that behaves like this, I simply dump it.

Life is too short to be tech supporting this stuff for hours.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

It took you a long time to find out the true merits of the invasiveness of Norton security products. I had a long spat with Norton a coupla years ago after several years' of satisfactory use. The only positive thing that came out of it was that they refunded my money after a forced upgrade. I replaced it with AVG Internet Security which is even more effective (daily automatic upgrades instead of 1-3 times/week). Zero invasiveness: it runs quietly in the background and does everything I ask of it. Note: its excellent 2-way firewall is disabled by the 1-way Microsoft sieve-like abortion in Vista (as with all 3rd party firewalls).

[Nowhere]

As Gurm would say, simply use NOD32 and default windows firewall if you really want to have software firewall ;P
And free Avast is very good too for some time...

Also...why buy cloning software when there are free things?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PartImage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PING_Backup_Software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Rescue_Kit

[Mikele]

With Norton Internet Security, my system slowed to a crawl

Me too.
Norton was OK, since two years ago. Now I prefer somethin like F-Prot... and thinking seriosly in changing OS. Linux (not usable yet for video editing) or Mac (but I don't like little things about Apple and OS X).

Virus on Microsoft systems makes me thinking in other OS... If you don't connect Windows to Internet, all is OK.

Another solution is dual boot: Windows for work, Linux for the net.

[Hulk]

I used to use Norton products but got tired of their ridiculous copy protection methods. Buy a 12 month subscription and then 6 months into it buy a new computer. Too bad! You lose 6 months. On top of that I found it impossible to speak with anyone. It invaded the computer like a virus...

I probably shouldn't say this but since upgrading to IE7 I haven't used any virus protection. I'm careful of the sites I visit and e-mail I open. I back up a lot. If something bad happens and I can't fix it I'll reformat.

Jerry - What product did you end up using?

[Dr Mordrid]

What the other guys said: Norton SUCKS.

We now use an SPI firewall + Computer Associates AV & anti spyware as provided by our ISP plus AdAware etc.

[Jerry Jones]

For imaging, I'm giving Acronis True Image 10 a try.

For protection, I'm giving Kaspersky a try; Kaspersky seems much better so far.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net