From the late `80's to the late `90's, I've enjoyed my experience with Symantec products. I discovered that the SystemWorks bundle did almost everything that the Microsoft OEM System Builder software prep bundle did, and much faster (as long as you knew what utilities to run, and in what order to run them). The Ghost application was truly the lifeboat of system administrators for a number of years, Speed Disk could defrag and concatenate files faster and better than any other product of it's time, and PC Anywhere allowed me to service my customers from the comfort of my bench rather than traveling to the remote system. Using these tools allowed me to take a system and make it operate as fast and as stable as possible, as well as give me recovery options in case of catastrophic failure.
Symantec has really gone downhill the past two years, to the point that I choose to no longer use or recommend their products. I can hardly believe that, after over 15 years of quality products, Symantec has come to this.
I've discovered many tools that replace the SystemWorks bundle in my arsenal of system administration applications. Best of all, no product activation and they're reasonably inexpensive. I recommend the following:
Anti-Virus: F-Prot for Windows. Ed's reader's opinions aside, when you look at the results of independent testing, you discover that F-Prot has the edge, and has maintained that edge for over 15 years. I can personally vouch for this product after over 20 years experience in the government computer security arena.
Disk Defragmentation: Diskeeper. This baby cut its teeth on mainframes and the Pro version blows away any other product I've ever used.
Disk Cloning: Acronis True Image. Make image backups without leaving the Windows GUI or rebooting. Make image backups straight to CD/DVD-R and RW devices, or across the network. No drive marking, allowing you to retain the disk in shape for forensic evaluation.
Will I return to Symantec? Well, they're going to have to do away with 1) product activation, 2) Internet access to scan a Microsoft data file for macro issues, 3) lousy customer support - both on-line and over-the-phone, and 4) sunsetting applications for no valid reason, such as new operating system version support.
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