Sunday, December 9, 2007

Norton Antivirus 2008 [new]

Story

NAV 2008 works well after a few days of being installed on my system. I have never experienced (knock on wood) many of the problems experienced by some here, year after year. I have been a user of this since 2001 and can report no such similar problems; in fact, over the years Norton has caught several viruses before they could do damage to my system.

That being said, the one change made to NAV this year which I do not like at all, is the inability to choose exactly which updates you want to download, as was possible with NAV 2007. You are able to view Details of what is downloaded AFTER the download process is complete and done, but not until then. There are times when an install of an update conflicts with something on your system, and you may need revert the drive and install it at a later time. This years' version does not give you that option! It simply runs through the update process and informs you when everything is downloaded. I do not like companies which treat the consumer as a child and think they know what is best for you and your system. I do not necessarily install Microsoft "critical" updates either just because Microsoft says to; as many (IE7 being the most notable) are not critical, but Microsoft wants you to install them. I will have to deduct one star for Symantec taking this backward step.

One day these companies will learn that consumers should be free to pick and choose precisely what goes onto their system.

Other story
After using Norton antivirus for several years on multiple computers with no problems and the 2006 version ever since it came out, also with no problems, I thought it would be interesting to see what the state of the art was in antivirus software so I did some research on the Internet. Generally, Norton gets decent reviews on most web sites but Kaspersky was often rated higher so I thought I would try it since my Norton subscription was expiring in a few days anyway. I ordered Kaspersky version 6.0 from Amazon for $50 with a $50 rebate and I thought it doesn't get any better than that. I uninstalled Norton and after installing Kaspersky, my computer continuously restarted. The manual tells what to do in such an event but their solution didn't work. I called their tech support and spent two hours on the phone trying to correct the problem. I downloaded and ran the Norton uninstaller, I downloaded and ran the Kaspersky uninstaller, I downloaded and installed Kaspersky version 7.0. We tried everything that the tech could think of, same problem. I asked him if this was a common problem and he said yes even though the manual says it is rare. It was late in the day and I was tired from the effort so I asked the tech if we could continue the next day and he said he would call me at 8 a.m. the next morning. Well, I've been around awhile and I doubted that he would call, and he didn't. After reviewing everything I had read about antivirus software and considering my experience with Norton, I downloaded and installed Norton antivirus 2008. It was easy and it's working perfectly. I'm sure that Kaspersky is excellent software if it works for you, but it didn't work for me and I'm not interested in going to all the effort it would require to try to make it work. I can count on one hand the number of times I have needed tech support for hardware or software so the fact that Norton charges for tech support is not important to me since I've never needed it anyway. I may try a different program someday, something like Nod 32 if they fix their interface, but for now I'm going to go by the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Buy It Now

No comments:


eXTReMe Tracker