Symantec kills off another competitor (Powerquest)

[*Vanguard*]

They're at it again. Symantec acquired Powerquest. Ow ow ow ow ow. I
recently tried to visit www.powerquest.com. Can't because there is
something wrong with the DNS for that IP name ... that there is NO entry
for it! I did a WhoIs lookup on powerquest.com and now Symantec owns
that domain (record updated 12-Dec-2003). Okay, but why aren't there
DNS records for that domain? Why don't users get redirected to the
Symantec domain? It's only been a couple months since the acquistion so
you'd think they would simply keep the powerquest.com domain which would
throw you back to symantec.com.

I remember way back when Symantec acquired Central Point's PC Tools
under the guise that it would continue the product. Wrong. It got
shelved and evaporated. It was a ploy to get rid of a competitor to
their previously acquired Norton product. Now I have to wonder if
Symantec is doing the same with Drive Image since it competes against
Ghost. I've used both and found Drive Image a more capable product for
personal use. "PowerQuest's key technologies, including virtual volume
imaging and server provisioning complement Symantec's Ghost solutions,"
said Paul Winn, PowerQuest president and CEO
(http://www.symantec.com/press/2003/n030923.html). Oh oh, looks like
Drive Image will get chopped. If Ghost is the product getting
complemented than it is unlikely that Drive Image will survive. Of
course, I love Symantec's statement "Drive Image 7.0 Backup is a premier
computer backup solution, ..." (http://www.symantec.com/driveimage/)
which means Ghost wasn't so great even in their own eyes. It wasn't too
long ago when Symantec dumped Winfax Pro. I wonder might happen to
Ghost or Drive Image. Two products performing similar functions. Yeah,
like they're going to keep both.

Symantec bought Central Point and in less than a year PC Tools
disappeared. They got Winfax (and Procomm) from Delrina and now Winfax
is dead. They bought Norton and now many of those utilities are waning
and will eventually die. Roxio shed GoBack onto Symantec. Symantec
bought Ghost from Binary Research and now they've sucked up Drive Image
from Powerquest so you know one of them will die. Hmm, do they ever
develop their own products?

 

[Lemon Jelly]

*Vanguard* - typed:

Symantec bought Central Point and in less than a year PC Tools
disappeared. They got Winfax (and Procomm) from Delrina and now
Winfax is dead. They bought Norton and now many of those utilities
are waning and will eventually die. Roxio shed GoBack onto Symantec.
Symantec bought Ghost from Binary Research and now they've sucked up
Drive Image from Powerquest so you know one of them will die. Hmm,
do they ever develop their own products?

Why screw up one's own products when one can screw up someone else's?
I still use Drive Image 5.01 successfully with NTFS & XP with no
problems, even run it from Task Scheduler during the night & with the
undocumented switch, will run 0 to 3 times faster than without for most
people (also works with DI 2002 I hear). I /was/ somewhat unimpressed
with their upgrade pricing.

I wish Symantec would buy up Roxio - they couldn't make their burning
s/w worse! Although I'm no great fan of Symantec, I've never had
problems with NAV2002 but would steer well clear of NSW under XP & their
defrag uses a proprietary API that doesn't understand XP's Prefetch
(O&O, Perfect Disk & Diskeeper use the MS API, IIRC). they also seem
unable to design uninstall routines without having external utilities to
clear up the mess left in the registry!

I visited PQ's website many weeks ago & was directed directly to
Symantec - the 1st I knew they'd been bought. They may have prematurely
removed the redirection. What I can't make out is DI2003 a disc imaging
utility, a backup program or both?

 

[David H. Lipman]

How do you think that NAV became a top AV product ?

Norton stripped the code from Central Point Anti Virus (CPAV) and discontinued the product
!.

From a conversation with a Symantec Corp. sales rep., they have cornered the market in
Imaging Software.

Dave



| They're at it again. Symantec acquired Powerquest. Ow ow ow ow ow. I
| recently tried to visit www.powerquest.com. Can't because there is
| something wrong with the DNS for that IP name ... that there is NO entry
| for it! I did a WhoIs lookup on powerquest.com and now Symantec owns
| that domain (record updated 12-Dec-2003). Okay, but why aren't there
| DNS records for that domain? Why don't users get redirected to the
| Symantec domain? It's only been a couple months since the acquistion so
| you'd think they would simply keep the powerquest.com domain which would
| throw you back to symantec.com.
|
| I remember way back when Symantec acquired Central Point's PC Tools
| under the guise that it would continue the product. Wrong. It got
| shelved and evaporated. It was a ploy to get rid of a competitor to
| their previously acquired Norton product. Now I have to wonder if
| Symantec is doing the same with Drive Image since it competes against
| Ghost. I've used both and found Drive Image a more capable product for
| personal use. "PowerQuest's key technologies, including virtual volume
| imaging and server provisioning complement Symantec's Ghost solutions,"
| said Paul Winn, PowerQuest president and CEO
| (http://www.symantec.com/press/2003/n030923.html). Oh oh, looks like
| Drive Image will get chopped. If Ghost is the product getting
| complemented than it is unlikely that Drive Image will survive. Of
| course, I love Symantec's statement "Drive Image 7.0 Backup is a premier
| computer backup solution, ..." (http://www.symantec.com/driveimage/)
| which means Ghost wasn't so great even in their own eyes. It wasn't too
| long ago when Symantec dumped Winfax Pro. I wonder might happen to
| Ghost or Drive Image. Two products performing similar functions. Yeah,
| like they're going to keep both.
|
| Symantec bought Central Point and in less than a year PC Tools
| disappeared. They got Winfax (and Procomm) from Delrina and now Winfax
| is dead. They bought Norton and now many of those utilities are waning
| and will eventually die. Roxio shed GoBack onto Symantec. Symantec
| bought Ghost from Binary Research and now they've sucked up Drive Image
| from Powerquest so you know one of them will die. Hmm, do they ever
| develop their own products?
|
| --
| ____________________________________________________________
| *** Post replies to newsgroup. E-mail is not accepted. ***
| ____________________________________________________________
|

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Lemon Jelly" said in news:[email protected]:

Although I'm no great fan of Symantec, I've never had
problems with NAV2002 but would steer well clear of NSW under XP &
their defrag uses a proprietary API that doesn't understand XP's
Prefetch (O&O, Perfect Disk & Diskeeper use the MS API, IIRC).

The last remnant of Norton Systemworks that kept it alive on my computer
was Speedisk. Otherwise, all the other utilities have been replaced,
and most with freebie alternatives that are equal or better. I finally
got rid of NSW when I switched from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.
Although the crippled defragmenter in Windows XP (from Diskeeper) isn't
supposed to let you schedule it, you can still add scheduled events to
run defrag.exe in Task Scheduler. For the rarely used options in
Speedisk, they weren't missed when using the simpleton defrag tool in
Windows XP. I had NSW Pro which included GoBack (but since it usurps
the MBR then I couldn't use it because I wanted to use Powerquest's
Bootmagic for multibooting), Ghost (but I trialed it for 2 months and
finally tossed it and went only with Drive Image), Cleansweep (which
wasn't that effective, has a crippled version included in Windows XP,
and could be corruptive), and Winfax (which Symantec has canned). All
of the Norton Utilities included in NSW waned over the last couple years
until most are worthless or have better replacements that are often
free. The last one left was their Norton AntiVirus but I got NIS2003
which has it so bye-bye to NSW.

That's one of the major failings when a software publisher buys
software. They didn't develop it. The expertise (in the people) used
to create the product often does not get transferred to the software
publisher. The software publisher is primarily interested in immediate
sales and will sacrifice longevity which incurs development costs for
improvements and bug fixes. A software publisher has shorter term goals
than do developers. The view of a software publisher is broad but
short. The view of a developer is narrow but more distant. And when a
software publisher sheds a product, they often don't exercise much
effort in finding someone willing to buy that legacy software so instead
it just evaporates.

I visited PQ's website many weeks ago & was directed directly to
Symantec - the 1st I knew they'd been bought. They may have
prematurely removed the redirection. What I can't make out is DI2003
a disc imaging utility, a backup program or both?

Well, drive imaging is what the product does. Backing up is how you can
use that image file. System recovery, system restore, crash recovery,
system backup, data backup (by using ImageExplorer to get at the files
within an image file), a simpler locally-run replacement for SysPrep,
and so on. I suppose you could even extend the definition of disk
imaging to include security, like overwriting the hard drive every night
with a known static image to prevent the user from making catastrophic
or nuisancesome changes and to force them to put their data on
network/mapped drives that get backed up so they always have backups of
their data.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"David H. Lipman" said in

How do you think that NAV became a top AV product ?

Norton stripped the code from Central Point Anti Virus (CPAV) and
discontinued the product !.

I couldn't remember where Symantec got Norton Antivirus originally.
Actually it wasn't Norton that stripped anything from Central Point. As
I recall, Norton got bought by Symantec before Symantec then bought
Central Point. Norton wasn't Norton anymore when NAV got yanked from
CPAV. Norton was enveloped and disgested by then.

 

[CS]

"David H. Lipman" said in


I couldn't remember where Symantec got Norton Antivirus originally.
Actually it wasn't Norton that stripped anything from Central Point. As
I recall, Norton got bought by Symantec before Symantec then bought
Central Point. Norton wasn't Norton anymore when NAV got yanked from
CPAV. Norton was enveloped and disgested by then.

Very true. Let's not blame Peter Norton for any of Symantec's doings.
He sold out at the right time. Too bad part of the deal was that they
could use his name on future software.

 

[David H. Lipman]

I remember the purchases of Golden Bow Software and Central Point Software. I don't
remember Symantec yet taking over Norton software and the time of acquisition of Central
Point Software. I think that happened 9 ~ 18 months later.

Dave



| "David H. Lipman" said in
| | > How do you think that NAV became a top AV product ?
| >
| > Norton stripped the code from Central Point Anti Virus (CPAV) and
| > discontinued the product !.
|
| I couldn't remember where Symantec got Norton Antivirus originally.
| Actually it wasn't Norton that stripped anything from Central Point. As
| I recall, Norton got bought by Symantec before Symantec then bought
| Central Point. Norton wasn't Norton anymore when NAV got yanked from
| CPAV. Norton was enveloped and disgested by then.
|

 

[Bullwinkel J. Moose]

I can only add to this thread that Symantec has been one of the biggest
predators in software. It is true they do not develope software but buy
their competitors and then kill them off. But worse as Mocrosoft has evolved
they have not updated their software to take into consideration the
improvements that both Microsoft and others have developed. You can say what
you want about Windows but they are pretty quick to react to problems and
put out a cure free of charge. Also other developers have been putting out
good replacements for norton products, many of the free. I have been a
longtime user of Partition Magic but I am now afraid that it too will end up
on the scrap heap of symantec discards. Hopefully XP will for a few years be
compatible with the programs that are in use out there.

I have said for some time that updates of NSW show fewer features. At this
time the only service I am using regularly is Speed Disk and that is being
superceded by "Perfect Disk" which while not free does not fail and operates
smoothly.

Bit by bit parts of NSW break and are not fixed because Symantec will not
support the home user. I don't believe they have any developers or
programmers on staff. They have farmed out everything anyway. So no support
nothing but sales people and that is coming only to retail.

Enough rant.

 

[Regina]

The last remnant of Norton Systemworks that kept it
alive on my computer was Speedisk. Otherwise, all the
other utilities have been replaced,and most with freebie
alternatives that are equal or better. I finally got rid
of NSW when I switched from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.

.....(edited for length) .... and Winfax (which Symantec
has canned). All of the Norton Utilities included in NSW
waned over the last couple years until most are worthless
or have better replacements that are often free. The
last one left was their Norton AntiVirus but I got
NIS2003 which has it so bye-bye to NSW.

.....(edited for length) ....

"The Unknown P"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

I got NAV2002 the same time I bought my computer with XP,
and I've been stumped at the total lack of support from
Symantec. Reading the history you all have provided, I am
much enlightened!

I'm going to bookmark this section of this usergroup so
that, when it comes time to renew my subscription later
this year, I can check out the alternatives -- like, I
recently discovered that Winfax is now useless.
Cleansweep also has never really worked properly.

One nice thing about Symantec is their Security Updates;
I visit their site before I do anything else when I turn
the computer on, and their anti-viral/anti-worm downloads
have certainly been worth their weight in Latinum.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"CS" said in news:[email protected]:

Very true. Let's not blame Peter Norton for any of Symantec's doings.
He sold out at the right time. Too bad part of the deal was that they
could use his name on future software.

I guess Peter just writes books now.

 

[*Vanguard*]

I remember Norton getting bought before Symantec acquired Central Point
because I had both utilities and wanted to use both. After Symantec ate
up CP, they really didn't even pretend to continue PC Tools. I don't
recall even a "next but last" upgrade that would've simply had Symantec
edit the files to replace "Central Point" with "Symantec" or "Norton".
I had Norton. Then Symantec came along and bought them and I wondered,
"Who the hell is Symantec?". I remember using both NU and PC Tools
because there must've been some different programs in each or some
worked better than in the other brand. I recall the disgust when
Symantec acquired CP because it was so overtly their way of getting rid
of the competition to their "new" Norton product. What pissed off
Symantec was that PC Tools was evolving faster than their Norton product
and they didn't like to play catch up or getting forced to "keep up with
the Joneses" which reduced their profit margin due to development costs.
Symantec is a software publisher first. Development is secondary or
incidental to maintain survivability to generate revenue.

 

[Mistoffolees]

They're at it again. Symantec acquired Powerquest. Ow ow ow ow ow. I
recently tried to visit www.powerquest.com. Can't because there is
something wrong with the DNS for that IP name ... that there is NO entry
for it! I did a WhoIs lookup on powerquest.com and now Symantec owns
that domain (record updated 12-Dec-2003). Okay, but why aren't there
DNS records for that domain? Why don't users get redirected to the
Symantec domain? It's only been a couple months since the acquistion so
you'd think they would simply keep the powerquest.com domain which would
throw you back to symantec.com.

There is always Arconis TrueImage for competition. IMHO, it is
a better product than the most recent PowerQuest DriveImage 7...
which required the installation of Microsoft .NET as well. And
there were also some niggling problems of using DI7 and presence
of removable media drives. At the very best, DI7, IMO, was still
a late beta.

And as for predatory practices, Symantec did well after initially
acquiring Central Point and Norton. But as with companies that
thrive by buying up other people's imaginations, developmental
prowess and genius, such businesses will eventually fail for the
eventual lack of good product. Planning to desert NAV, Ghost,
WinFAX, etc., for something better?

 

[Lil' Dave]

Symantec bought out Powerquest for one simple reason, code. PQ's latest
entry of DI 7 allowed in-use file backup during imaging process. This has
very obvious benefits both at the user and server level. Restoration from
image is similar in benefit.

Yes, they have the biggest part of market-share for now. I expect that to
change as Symantec takes on tech support for PQ's former imaging product or
what's incorporating into Ghost. This is my reasoning for imaging users to
check-out other competitors in this market now for moving to competing
software. There is one reasonable competition out there for imaging open
files that I'm aware of for PC users.
Dave

 

[Lil' Dave]

http://home.pmt.org/~drose/aw-dos-30.html
1994 Symantec Corp bought out Central Point.
Peter Norton had long retired from Symantec before then.
Peter has continued his career writing many, many computer-oriented books.
MS did offer stripped-down version of CP's antivirus program at one time.
Was discontined when Win95 was introduced. CPAV detected Win95 as a virus,
which isn't far off the mark.
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-005.html
Symantec merged with Peter Norton Computing in 1990.
http://www.pushtotest.com/ptt/bio.html
Dave

 

[David H. Lipman]

Oh well -- so much for memory as one ages :-(

Dave



| http://home.pmt.org/~drose/aw-dos-30.html
| 1994 Symantec Corp bought out Central Point.
| Peter Norton had long retired from Symantec before then.
| Peter has continued his career writing many, many computer-oriented books.
| MS did offer stripped-down version of CP's antivirus program at one time.
| Was discontined when Win95 was introduced. CPAV detected Win95 as a virus,
| which isn't far off the mark.
| http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-005.html
| Symantec merged with Peter Norton Computing in 1990.
| http://www.pushtotest.com/ptt/bio.html
| Dave
| | > "David H. Lipman" said in
| > | > > How do you think that NAV became a top AV product ?
| > >
| > > Norton stripped the code from Central Point Anti Virus (CPAV) and
| > > discontinued the product !.
| >
| > I couldn't remember where Symantec got Norton Antivirus originally.
| > Actually it wasn't Norton that stripped anything from Central Point. As
| > I recall, Norton got bought by Symantec before Symantec then bought
| > Central Point. Norton wasn't Norton anymore when NAV got yanked from
| > CPAV. Norton was enveloped and disgested by then.
| >
|
|

 

[Lil' Dave]

Well, we can debunk the "Norton" bashing. Should be Symantec Corp. Peter
Norton was/is a computer genuis. Thing is, I don't anyone doing that.
Dave

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Mistoffolees" said in news:%23%[email protected]:

Planning to desert NAV, Ghost,
WinFAX, etc., for something better?

For NAV, probably continue using it although I dislike their use of
their ccApp.exe (common client application) across several of their
products as it now is also a common point of failure (and has proven
itself so). When the subscription runs out in another 10 months, I'll
look again. I do the same with car insurance.

For Ghost, I have that as part of NSW Pro but got rid of it (along with
NSW). Now I just use Drive Image and will continue to use it as long as
it appears uncorrupted by Symantec and works on Windows XP. About the
time I next figure on getting my next OS, it may not even be a flavor of
Windows (and I'm already planning on the hardware resources to allow
parallel and concurrent use of a *NIX and Windows environment to aid in
my education and migration).

For Winfax, had the Pro 11 version in the retail box which turned out to
the 11.01 version but the 11.02 version was needed for compatibility
with Office XP. When Symantec said they wanted money after I had just
bought their 11.01 version off the store shelf about a month ago (and
that they don't even bother to list the minor version number and treat
..01 and .02 as separate versions instead of providing a downloadable
patch), I figured their "**** 'em" attitude was the same one I'd take
with them, too. Sales folks can be such idiots in trying to generate
the tiniest of revenue while losing sight of the bigger picture of the
larger impact of dissatisified customers.

I also use NIS and am now starting to checkout what replacements are
available. That damn common client app of theirs just keeps screwing up
everything.

So far what Symantec has succeeded in the last 3 years is to make me
rethink about their products and promote me AWAY from their products. I
recall Bloc Publishing (think that was their name) buying some software
that I liked (don't remember its name - too long ago) but because they
were also a software publisher instead of a more narrowly but
longer-range focused developer then that product went stagnant and I
never bothered continuing with it.

--