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Reader Voices: Antivirus Disease

By Ed Foster, Section The Gripelog
Posted on Tue Mar 23, 2004 at 02:05:33 PM PDT

The response to my most recent Weblog item about problems with Norton AntiVirus (NAV) 2004 demonstrates users are sick of dealing with their antivirus software.

"I'm a 20-year computer tech who's been using (and selling) NAV religiously for the last several years," wrote one reader. "Due to the MASSIVE rash of sudden NAV-related problems we're seeing at work, I've changed my mind. Finally at home my wife's computer had a ‘Norton has encountered an internal error ...’ and I bought McAfee. No more NAV for me. Had no troubles I couldn't fix with all versions PRIOR to 2004."

Support difficulties figure prominently in many of these complaints. "I also had difficulties installing NAV 2004, but it wasn't due to my technical inability," another reader wrote. "I've exhausted the tech support docs on the support site, and finally had to pay for a tech support call to un-install and re-install. Oh, and by the way, my TCP/IP stack blew up during this loveliness, which I had to re-install and reconfigure. LiveUpdate still doesn't work, but rather than pay another $39.95 for a support call, I'm manually downloading and installing Antivirus updates. How insane is that?! Extremely dissatisfied with NAV 2004 and will not upgrade to a newer version until it flat refuses to work on my PC."

As gripes about McAfee are common as well, several readers suggested another alternative to Norton. "Go to www.grisoft.com," one reader wrote. "Get the Freeware AVG. I've run it for several years, and have had zero problems with it. Always timely updates, and they're at least as quick as the others to jump on new viruses. No nagware, or other hooha, just a good, solid anti-virus product, absolutely free. Can't ask for more than that. And if you want to support their efforts, they have a fancier product you can buy. But the free AVG gives you everything you need to be safe. I've read numerous comments in various forums from users of AVG, and have never heard anything but praise for it."
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Reader Voices: Antivirus Disease | 11 comments (11 topical) | Post A Comment
Corporate Edition[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#1)
by tscoff on Tue Mar 23, 2004 at 02:30:57 PM PDT

I have been using Symantec's Corporate Edition of their Anti-Virus client for about 3 years now and it doesn't have any of the headaches that I've had with their retail client.  I have to buy 10 licenses at a time, but it works reliably, is easy to install, and is easy to update with new definition files.  It's much, much better than NAV 200x ever was.

If anyone from Symantec is reading this why can't I buy that product for a single computer?

[ Reply to This ]



SAV CE[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#2)
by Anonymous User on Wed Mar 24, 2004 at 01:12:55 AM PDT

Just give them time to screw up the Corporate Edition. Already, SAV 3.1 for Domino on Windows requires product activation, and requires you to install a new digital certificate every time you renew your license... When you get a chance, try converting from a Managed 8.1 Windows client to an Unmangaged one (hint - the answer isn't documented). The installation process for SAV for Domino for Linux is a hideously broken joke. I can deal with the annoying 10-license-at-a time issue, but their initial forays into DRM for the corporate market are worrying me.

Oh yeah, and why the hell do I have to keep skipping the registration process on products that are only sold in to volume license users that are already registered during the purchase process (I have to do this twice every time I install PC Anywhere 11, unless I create a custom package)?

[ Parent | Reply to This ]


Panda Antivirus[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#3)
by malleron on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 08:22:52 AM PDT

Another alternative to NAV is Panda Antivirus. It's about the same price as the retail NAV (I think), but it works soooo much better. For a start, it auto-updates definitions -- I've never had to manually download anything to update. It does it all by itself, sometimes a few times a day. As well, it's never given me any internal error grief. I love that it's unobtrusive, just doing its job without me having to jack with it. I've found it to be a very good replacement for NAV and McAfee. Can't speak to their support quality, because I've never needed it in the several months I've used Panda AV.

[ Reply to This ]


NAV and McAfee[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#4)
by swaim on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 10:56:07 AM PDT

I haven't had any problems with NAV 2003 on my home machine. At work, we use McAfee, and I've had ongoing problems with it randomly chewing up 100% of my CPU for minutes at a time. It essentially kills my machine while it's doing its thing.

[ Reply to This ]


Try F-Prot[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#5)
by Anonymous User on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:05:31 AM PDT

I've been using F-Prot (www.f-prot.com) for a year now, and have been very glad to be rid of the Norton/Macfee mess. I had plenty of problems with the "big" guys; F-Prot works well and can be set up to automatically download and distribute updates on your network. And F-Prot is reasonably priced ($50/year for 10 computers). Another issue is the speed of updates. I recently saw a research project which tried to determine how fast AV companies reacted to virii. (I'm afraid I don't remember where I saw that.) F-Prot was near the top, while not surprisingly, Norton and Macfee were very near the bottom. With the rapidly changing virii recently (our network is averaging 20 incoming viruses per day), fast reactions are critical. So I'd recommend dumping both Norton and Macafee. There are lots of alternatives out there that don't spam you, don't DRM you, don't try to do a dozen things you don't need, and work great (better, even, if you think that catching viruses is the job of an anti-virus).

[ Reply to This ]


Here's the link to antivirus response times[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#8)
by Anonymous User on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 01:16:47 AM PDT

The study you mentioned about the average response time of antivirus companies to new viruses in the wild is part of an article by Brian Livingston at:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3316511


[ Parent | Reply to This ]



Another vote for Grisoft AVG[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#6)
by Anonymous User on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:30:24 AM PDT

I had NAV and was getting tired of paying license fees for 2 home PC's. Found Grisoft AVG and so far, no worries. I recommend it.

[ Reply to This ]


Love your adverts[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#7)
by Anonymous User on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 05:25:09 PM PDT

Hey Ed, Love the NAV 2004 Advert on the site while this article is posted. They even appear to brag about offering "product activation". Thanks for the chuckle.

[ Reply to This ]


Sophos and NOD32[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#9)
by Anonymous User on Sun Sep 26, 2004 at 07:12:37 AM PDT

The last time I used Norton was back in 1996. It failed to detect several viruses back then, causing me hours of wasted time cleaning hundreds of computers. I have since refused to deploy their AV programs either at work on my approx 2300 client network nor at home. I now use Sophos at work and NOD32 at home. These programs are much less well known, but they are by far superior to NAV, McAfee, AVG and Panda in detection, speed, resource utilization, update frequency and average response time.

[ Reply to This ]


NOD 32 rocks[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#10)
by Anonymous User on Thu Jun 09, 2005 at 12:26:31 PM PDT

By Hazmeister:

NOd32 is so much better than Sophos, NAV and McAfee.  It's (MUCH) faster, and apparently hasn't missed a single wild virus in recent tests.

(And a small warning to McAfee users, if ou use it's password lock thingy, it can log itself in after  few minutes to run the screen saver or something [Well protected :(    ])

[ Parent | Reply to This ]



alabama[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#14)
by rickman on Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 07:55:52 PM PDT

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[ Reply to This ]


Reader Voices: Antivirus Disease | 11 comments (11 topical) | Post A Comment
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