Why does everybody seem to hate Symantec (Norton) ?

[its_my_dime]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.
No one seems to say that the programs don't work. Is this professional
jealousy? What is really going on?

Thank you.

 

[Shaun]

Never had problems with it, but it is so big and bulky and slows your
machine down and that is why I would not use it. Too controlling.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on
this and similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a
pot shot at them. No one seems to say that the programs don't work.
Is this professional jealousy? What is really going on?

hah.. Professional Jealousy.
No.

It is experience with these programs - particularly the home oriented ones -
in everyday life (and/or just in helping the people withthe problems in
these newsgroups.)

I have several sites where we maintain a Symantec System Center (server) and
many clients that use that server to update off of. In general - the
Symantec side of things (corporate level) seems to be better off than the
home side (Norton) and I have little to say bad (but there are some things)
about Symantec Antivirus and such in this way. It can cause little issues
when upgrading from one version to another (even small upgrades) and getting
a new version even with a maintenance contract is like pulling teeth with
just your fingers sometimes - but overall - not bad.

The Norton (home/home office) side is a different story. I have had to
personally do some really obscure repairs in order to get machines working
after all the user did was *uninstall* a norton product - usually Norton
Internet Security. It's also a resource hog - using as much as it can for
tasks that just should not take all that much of your systems resources. I
have few complaints with the Norton AntiVirus (as a stand-alone product) -
albeit also a resource hog - but when they start combining functions with
"Internet Security" - things get overbloan and many of the people who have
it do not configure it beyond what it comes as - making it less than ideal -
and then because of the expense (if nothing else) people will continue
running the same tired/unsupported versions for years past their prime.

So overall - not speaking for everyone, I find Norton (particularly
all-in-one suites) products to be a bit hog-like in their use of resources
and they can cause severe issues (cannot boot) with what should be a simple
process (removal) for no apparent reason. For those reasons I generally
steer people away from at least the all-in-one products. As far as
Symantec - the corporate end of the scale - do what you want. =)

 

[Guest]

My guess would be that 1) Symantec is a HUGE resource hog and 2) their
support sucks.

That is from MY personal experience. I used to LOVE Symantec/Norton. I
wouldn't recommend their products now.

 

[Guest]

Shenan - I must agree completely. I used the Corporate Edition at work, and
it work well, for the most part.

 

[DL]

Simply by experience

 

[R. McCarty]

I would agree with your analysis of Norton Home products.
What many folks who view negative postings fail to take into
account is that it's a different view when you are supporting a
PC and not just a user. I'm convinced that PC users are more
aware of how shaky and problematic Norton software is. I've
personally spent way too much time and effort trying to get a
Norton product to install, activate, upgrade or uninstall.
Best to call it what it is - junk, and move on to something else.

 

[Jim]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.
No one seems to say that the programs don't work. Is this professional
jealousy? What is really going on?

Thank you.

First, NAV doesn't have the best detection rate.
Second, despite not being the best at detection, it is a resource hog.
Third, despite the first and second, it is bear to eliminate.

I'm not a professional, but those three reasons are good enough for me.

Jim

 

[Guest]

The other aspect that surprisingly no-one's mentioned yet is the unethical
way it's forced onto new users as an unwanted preinstall, which then nags
them to register and, eventually, pay. In many respects this is worse than
the anti-competitive practices that Microsoft have been accused of. It
creates a captive market, one in which product quality is of little
significance, since a huge proportion of inexperienced users will simply take
the line of least resistance and pay-up rather than spend the time and effort
discovering how to remove it.

I curse when I find it on new computers, especially If I've paid for XP Pro,
because basically it means that if I want a 'clean machine' then I need to
format, reinstall and re-activate something that I've already paid for
(Windows) and which by rights should be ready to use.

HST, what's even more shady is the practice of removing the uninstall
registry entries to stop the software being removed, which has been found on
some computers preloaded with 'the other major antivirus product.' Some might
say that oversteps the line from dodgy to criminal. At least I've never
encountered this with Norton.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

The other aspect that surprisingly no-one's mentioned yet is the
unethical way it's forced onto new users as an unwanted preinstall,
which then nags them to register and, eventually, pay. In many
respects this is worse than the anti-competitive practices that
Microsoft have been accused of. It creates a captive market, one in
which product quality is of little significance, since a huge
proportion of inexperienced users will simply take the line of
least resistance and pay-up rather than spend the time and effort
discovering how to remove it.

I curse when I find it on new computers, especially If I've paid
for XP Pro, because basically it means that if I want a 'clean
machine' then I need to format, reinstall and re-activate something
that I've already paid for (Windows) and which by rights should be
ready to use.

HST, what's even more shady is the practice of removing the
uninstall registry entries to stop the software being removed,
which has been found on some computers preloaded with 'the other
major antivirus product.' Some might say that oversteps the line
from dodgy to criminal. At least I've never encountered this with
Norton.

Huh?

If an OEM pre-installs it - that is the OEM's choice - not Symantec/Norton's
(although they may benefit from it and have made a deal with the OEM to do
this.) In the end the OEM chose what to install 'out-of-the-box. Some
choose other suites - very few choose none-at-all at this point, although
that used to be the case.

The captive market you speak of is a combination of different players acting
together - not just Symantec/Norton... So I do not belittle them for that.
They may *have a hand* in it - but they are not the only game in town, are
not installed on every computer sold - since it is (again) the computer
manufacturer who decided what to put on it before selling it to the
customer.

 

[Rock]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.
No one seems to say that the programs don't work. Is this professional
jealousy? What is really going on?

Professional jealousy? Where did you get that thought?

In the days of Norton, before Symantec took over, they made great products.
Not so now for the home market. Just see how many posts in here expressing
problems with something in them related to one of their products? They are
resource intensive, intrusive, very hard to uninstall cleanly, and usually
cause problems down the road. Besides, they are expensive compared to the
cost of other products which do a much better job, some of them for free.

I used to use NAV, but switched several years ago due to the above problems
and have been much better without them. Those that support client systems
know the agony of dealing the Symantec home products.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.

Symantec/Norton programs tend to overload your system with
non-essential crap.

Don't know why they can't design their stuff to NOT do that, but so far
they haven't been able to do so.

 

[Leythos]

Professional jealousy? Where did you get that thought?

In the days of Norton, before Symantec took over, they made great products.
Not so now for the home market. Just see how many posts in here expressing
problems with something in them related to one of their products? They are
resource intensive, intrusive, very hard to uninstall cleanly, and usually
cause problems down the road. Besides, they are expensive compared to the
cost of other products which do a much better job, some of them for free.

I used to use NAV, but switched several years ago due to the above problems
and have been much better without them. Those that support client systems
know the agony of dealing the Symantec home products.

I use Symantec Corporate products on all my home computers, my office
computers, all the computers in my company, and all of our clients use
it for their servers and workstations. We use GFI products for faxing
and email security.

As for Norton or branded Symantec home user class products - like others
have said, they USE to make great products, but, as they've moved the
products to protect more and more non-technical users against their own
lack of understanding and their own lack of anything knowledgeable they
made their products bloated and cumbersome.

With that said, I've used about every product on the market, and we work
with three sororities that we consider "in the wild" as we don't manage
their computers and they only use NAT for a barrier. These computers run
about every known AV solution and the stats we've seen during the last
few years are as follows:

AVG Free Edition - ever computer running it has been compromised at one
time or another.

Norton Branded AV - only one computer was compromised and it was out of
date at the time.

McAfee - Most of their systems were not updated, in fact the users
didn't even know they had to register to get updates. One user had even
upgraded to a new years service, thinking that it had installed, but it
was expired and not working - two hours on the phone with
support/customer service to get the proper download

CA - Worked, updated, didn't find any problems - the users were unaware
of how it worked or that it was not set to scan on schedule.

Syamntec Corp - even though the two users systems were old versions, and
not current (2 months out of date) they were uncompromised.

Panda - While they were uncompromised, this product requires more
resources than Norton products, and it slows the computer to a crawl,
after using it for several months and users seeing Norton/AVG/McaFee on
other systems (exact same model) they removed it and installed AVG or
some other.

This has been the same experience over the periods each year. The most
common infection methods is clicking on a link sent via IM and then
running the file clicked on.

Because of this experience I no longer suggest AVG as a protection
method for people I care about. Because of the lack of clear update
process I don't recommend McAfee. because of bloat I never suggest
Panda. I do like Symantec Corp and Antivir at this time.

 

[Leythos]

Symantec/Norton programs tend to overload your system with
non-essential crap.

Don't know why they can't design their stuff to NOT do that, but so far
they haven't been able to do so.

Symantec Corp products are very light on system resources. It's best to
not lump Symantec as being their residential branded products and their
corporate branded products.

 

[Guest]

Personal experience with the following, did not find a trojan dropper that
had been on my system for years, Kas did first time. caused a horrible system
slow down and badly delayed boot up, and worst of all, when Norton was
removed on w2000 Pro it caused various software to cease functioning, along
with windows update and Microsoft update.

 

[PA Bear]

Uninstall all Norton applications and see how much faster your machine is!

 

[teldave]

Uninstall all Norton applications and see how much faster your machine is!

 

[teldave]

Uninstall all Norton applications and see how much faster your machine is!

Yes I agree, I rip the home version off all new computers I sell, just
too many problems.
I've seen plenty of virus's on computers with Nortons usually the worst
kinds.
Just last week a callout to a Nortons upgrade gone wrong, customer
can't download a thing now, no emails or Norton fixes & plus it
disables windows restore. There is a fix for this though, you just have
to go off through their site and troll for it. Their customer also
could'nt understand the help desk's persons accent although he gathered
he had to download a fix, but guess what his browser was blocked from
downloading. I've seen many of these problems, just try to get the
money back after a failed upgrade.
I once years ago had Nortons on a radio station computer, said it found
several problems that needed fixing, ran the fix & the computer never
booted again--complete format and start again job that one. Never
installed Nortons again.
I agree though that the anti-virus seems OK on its own, although last
Dec 25th my fathers computer crashed with a virus, he used to love
Nortons but he never could boot again. Guess what I did all Christmas
day.
I think the program gets targeted because the companies so big and the
writers get some immense pleasure killing it--I'm guessing thats why
its nailed down so much.
You know I reckon make the customer a limited user (test the
configuration though as some software stops working i.e Nero, some
printers etc) Install AVG or Avast, ashampoo firewall free and a paid
version of spyware doctor, nearly bullet proof. Thats my milage anyhow.

Cheers Dave

 

[TMitchell]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.
No one seems to say that the programs don't work. Is this professional
jealousy? What is really going on?

Thank you.

My new Lenovo (IBM ThinkPad) laptop came pre-loaded with the
Professionl-level IT-department quality Symantic Client Security program
suite. This is a stand-alone, non-networked computer, so I did not need
something as complex and robust as this. It worked OK, but started
nagging me to purchase a licensee 60 days before the 90-day free trial
was up. When I went to the Symantic website to get a paid licensee, I
instead ended being mislead in ordering an upgrade to the Symantic
Client Security program - physical CD delivery, no website download
available, no order tracking info, no licensee or product activation key
and no reasonable way to get any kind of response from Symantic customer
service, as their website lead to an endless do-loop of catch-22s that
made it impossible to get a reply.

Tracking down a customer support phone number proved equally perplexing,
but (numbers that either never answered or, if they did, directed me to
call another number that never answered or directed me back to the first
number). I finally got through to one of those script-reading drones in
India who concluded that even though my professional Client Security
version of the program entitled me to their professional technical
support, because I was a single home user I had to contact another
department instead. The number the script reader gave me directed me to
another number and, you guessed it, that number never ever answered.

When the program CD finally arrived (after repeated email inquiries over
a period of almost two months) and I went to install and activate it, it
prompted me for a licensee key which Symantic never provided. Going
through the hassle of reaching the script-readers in India again, and
repeated attempts to get an email response from Symantic, I finally got
PO'd and uninstalled the Symantic programs (using their Removal Tool)
and went with Zone Alarm Pro and CA E-trust for the antivirus.

The whole experienced reinforced my stubbornness of trying to not get
any computer hardware or software products that do not have easily
reachable support professions based in the US and avoiding Symantic
products at all cost. I have never received anything that even comes
close to professional quality support from any India-based operation,
and I have little respect for the companies that try to reduce costs by
reducing service to their customers through those laughable "technical"
India-based support centers.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I note that almost every time Symantec or Norton is mentioned on this and
similar boards, somebody (usually a professional) takes a pot shot at them.
No one seems to say that the programs don't work. Is this professional
jealousy? What is really going on?

Thank you.

I used, and recommended, Norton Antivirus and then Norton Internet
Security, for many years, on Win98, WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP, all without
any significant problems.

However, when my subscription to Symantec's updates for Norton
Internet Security 2002 came up for renewal (at a cost substantially
higher than the preceding year's subscription), I decided to try less
expensive solutions. I downloaded and installed the free version of
GriSoft's AVG (http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php ) and the free
version of Sygate's Personal Firewall
(http://smb.sygate.com/free/default.php ). Both have proven to be
easily installed, easy to use, and quite effective. Additionally, I was
pleasantly surprised to see a very noticeable *improvement* in my PC's
performance, once I'd replaced the Symantec product.

Essentially, Symantec's consumer product line is bloated with too many
resource-hogging features. The applications slow down the computer too
much. (Symantec's corporate grade anti-virus product, however, seem to
be much better, in this regard, probably because they didn't develop it
from scratch; they purchased Intel's LANDesk Virus Protect and continued
improving upon it.)


--

Bruce Chambers

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