Saturday, April 07, 2007

AntiVirus

People who write software viruses are scum, and could I drop them into a vat of boiling oil, I would gladly do so.

No, I didn't get one.

But I did get to spend ninety minutes of quality time with the 'support' group for Symantec, makers of Norton AntiVirus.

About whom, I'll simply say: when this year's subscription is up, I'll ditch them entirely, because they're bloated and nonresponsive.

How nonresponsive? When I tried to renew a subscription to one of their products, their automated system said it could not find the code key. I just deleted it (good move) and bought the new version (bad move). Bad because the day after I did that, the other PC started saying that its software was expired, three months after it was renewed.

After the ninety minutes of quality time, I gave up, deleted and rebought that software, and now I'm done.

But Symantec can go tothe dogs for all I care. Never again.

8 comments:

Rach said...

That totally sucks!
Thankfully there are other options out there, tho not too many.

We use McAfee and haven't had a problem in the 8 years we've used them. Tho we did forget about upgrading when the one year expired and got a doosey of a virus that killed our computer. *sigh*

Cerulean Bill said...

Interesting that you should say that, Rach -- I mentioned to my wife that the only other major company I know of was McAfee, and I wasn't too impressed with them, based on what the installation was like when I was setting up my mother's PC. Maybe I ought to give them another look....

Narie said...

I use Trend Micro PC-cillin, I've been really happy with it. I wasn't a fan of Norton at all either.

Cerulean Bill said...

I looked at the Wikipedia entry for TM, which reminded me that they had a high-profile false alarm two years ago. I knew I remembered it for a reason. I did try to go to their website, which doesn't seem to be responding at the moment. Perhaps I'll try again in a bit. Thanks.

Narie said...

Eek, ha, so much for my recommendation! In all seriousness though, I've been happy with it, no problems whatsoever. I'm curious about the high profile false alarm you mentioned though *pads off to Wiki*

Cerulean Bill said...

As I recall, it was something along the lines of declaring that some functions of Windows were actually a virus.....which, come to think of it, is what Apple's been saying all along.

Sweeti said...

All I can say is Grrrrr. on the subject of NAV. It has costed me more money and headaches than I care to count. And your right it's a bloated program with to much power over my pc. and Ghost was a joke.

Cerulean Bill said...

The only Ghost I know (in a PC sense) is Norton Ghost. That the one? I'd heard nice things about it. No?