Mike--
*As far as actual virus protection, Norton 2004 or 2005 offer little if any
substantive advancement over 2003.* They are easier to get compatible with
XP SP2. Most effort every year with Norton seems to go with the hype that
they put on those yellow boxes to convince you they've actually added
functionality of value.
Any Norton/Symantec engineer will tell you that Auto Update is the key for
any NAV product or NAV in NSW. Autoupdate fully contains script blocking
and email scanning and those services listed separately are hype and
duplication.
If you're using a Norton antivirus product, far and away the best way to
update your definitions or is to use Intelligent Updater manually from the
site shortcut every day. You can't count on Live Update to update
definitions on a daily basis because their philosophy is that it doesn't
need to unless there is a significant threat released.
Intelligent Updater Download for Daily Definitions (Use First Link)
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/download/pages/US-N95.html
When To Use Intelligent Updater Instead Of Live Update
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...2002021908382713?OpenDocument&src=sec_web_nam
Their compatibility posture with XP SP2, telling people incorretly that 2002
and 2003 are obsolete when they do nearly everything of value that 2005 does
is reprehensibly misleading. It is designed to pressure people into buying
Norton 2005 products. They pull this every time Microsoft issues a service
pack or new version of Windows that can raise compatibility issues.
To make it more eggregious, Symantec/Norton has been platinum partners with
Microsoft for years, and Microsoft has made information on their code
changes readily available to Symantec for months in advance of the release
of a new Windows flavor or in the case of a recent release, XP SP2. The
partnership provides for ample communication between Cupertino California
and Springfield Oregon offices of Symantec and the Redmond campus of
Microsoft. Both companies have the requisite phones, live meetings, and
Gulfstream V5s at their beck and call.
If Microsoft didn't make Windows, Symantec would have little market, and
Symantec now knows that Microsoft is getting ready to enter the antivirus
market very soon.
Microsoft Antivirus Product Up and Running
http://news.com.com/Security+vendors+face+new+kid+on+block:+Microsoft/2100-1016_3-5302920.html
Norton 2005 does include a small amount of code from their 2005 personal
firewall used in NPF or NIS, but how much is difficult if not impossible to
find out. Norton is bloated, uses too many resources for what is delivered,
and takes up more real estate than it should.
Given their goofy policy of only delivering the WMI patch for SP2 via Live
Update, and refusing to put it on their site (when some people cannot get
Live Update to work properly with SP2 no matter whether they follow Norton
KB 1812 or uninstall reinstall many times in different orders, a lot of
people are just switching to Computer Associates, Kapersky, Trend, or other
antivirus products that aren't near as buggy.
Norton has way too many byzantine KBs and situations where it gets buggy or
incompatible given the length of time Symantec has owned it and had
opportunites to improve it
Best,
Chad Harris
_______________________________________________
Friday 08/27/2004 ~ 10:30AM Eastern U.S.A.
Thanks to all for the 5 feed-backs on my question.
As far as I know,
the college network does not have a requirement
for a specific user operating system
- last year Windows 98SE was being used successfully
from my daughter's Dell on the college network.
What I neglected to mention in the XP Home/Pro posted question
is that the Dell (98SE) did have Norton Anti-Virus 2003
with the automatic subscription downloads installed
(and as far as I know, operating).
When the Dell got cloberred,
the Norton Anti-Virus 2003 was one of 2 pieces of software
that became dis-abled
(could not even manually open Norton Anti-Virus 2003
after the infection)
- the other software that got clobbered was AOL.
So right now,
I do not have confidence in Norton Anti-Virus,
although I do not know the details
of what is "new and improved" in Norton AV 2004 versus 2003,
nor do I know exactly what happened on the Dell.
The recent 2 hours of "professional service" came-up with a zero,
so right now a campus computer-sci major is cluing-out the situation,
and,
is actually making much better progress
- he's got Norton AV 2003 working again on the machine
and "... found ~ 10 Trojan worm viruses..."
(at this point, this is 2nd-rendered info,
so the accurately of what I'm hearing right now is probably low).
Anyway,
I am going to seriously follow-up on some of the alternative
defense software mentioned in the 5 feed-backs
(such as E-Trust Armor),
and,
in my crammed-in reading over the past 36 hours
I've seen mentioned in the 09/04 PCWorld issue (page 164)
a free firewall product Zone Lab's ZoneAlarm.
If I need to purchase a new replacement machine,
again I thank you all
for your feed-back.
(e-mail address removed) (Mike E Soc) wrote in message
