Norton Internet Security 2007 or Kaspersky or Zone Alarm
Folks,
This really seems to have me going in circles - small office (8 workstations on a peer-to-peer network. three laptops that go home & to the job sites - electrical contracting)
In the "old" days, I used to use PC Tools made by Central Point tools on my home computers.
Then, Symantec took them over, so I was forced to migrate to all of their products (SystemWorks, AntiVirus, Internet Security).
The Symantec products seemed to evolve every year into a mixed bag that never included everything that was needed, and some even seemed to do double coverage or to conflict with the other products - so I eventually found that I had Norton Password Manager, Norton SystemWorks and Norton Internet Securtiy - all seperate packages, installed on my laptop - my primary work computer.
I recently got a friendly "upgrade" notice for my Norton SystemWorks/ Internet Security bundle because my installed version(s) were expiring.
I tried to pay attention to all the glitze and glamour that Symantec bundles for "free" within their packages, but by the time I had followed all the installation instructions - requiring me to uninstall "previous versions", etc. etc. etc., I was pretty frustrated.
What had happened:
The latest & greatest NIS 2007 no longer shows a unique "Norton Antivirus" tab - although their tech support folks tell me that it "infers" that the antivirus program exists.
My Norton Ghost, part of the older Norton SystemWorks Premier package, was gone (I used it to weekly backup to an external hard drive.)
The "new" NSW (Norton System Works) no longer displayed an "antivirus" scanner.
Attempting to get to the bottom of things with Symantec only proved more frustrating, especially when one of their tech folks recommended that I by yet another of their products just to get back to where I was before I started on this journey.
I then took a look at the internet security & antivirus recommendations here at Experts Exchange as well as at Cnet & ZDnet, and decided to give Kaspersky AntiVirus 6 and ZoneAlarm Pro 6 a try. Both packages installed effortlessly and pretty easily seemed to configure - both at home on my 802.11g wireless, at the office 802.11g & 10/100 network connections. They also found our business network and faily easily were configured to allow me to get to work.
I then contacted an outside vendor that we use to do system maintenance at the office - both for hardware, software and networking - to get their opinion of what I had done. I asked if duplicating the Kaspersky/ ZoneAlarm package for our office would be OK - especially since two other computers had pop-ups reminding us that the installed Symantec packages were coming up for renewal.
His response was that Kaspersky, although not unknow, was so seldom used that he didn't recommend it (he "tongue in cheek" called it #17 on the block). He recommended that we look at McAffee or TrendMicro products - with more favorable recommendation on TrendMicro.
So .... we purchased two copies (each good for up to 3 computers) of TrendMicro PC-cillin Internet Security 2007.
I then attempted to install on one of the other laptops - running Win XP Pro SP2. It had originallly been shipped with McAffee, but we had installed NSW & NIS on it this calendar year. I used Control Panel - install/ uninstall to remove both products. I downloaded Symantec's seperate removal program to supposedly "scour" the system, and cleaned booted the computer.
Two different attempts to install both failed part way through.
I then used regedit to "find" and deleted all references to Norton, Symantec and McAfee and attemted yet another install of TrendMicro's product. Same failures at the same places in the process. Argggh.
Since ZoneAlarm Pro had installed on my personal laptop, I downloaded the 15 day free version of ZoneAlarm Internet Security (includes all the features of ZA Pro as well as an antivirus and spam blocker). Within 30 minutes, I had the software installed and configured - even self-detected the wireless in the office, as well as the network.. Pretty awesome by comparison to what I've recently experienced with both Symantec and TrendMicro.
Now, having done all of the above - what am I missing? Is this a good solution for the application?
This really seems to have me going in circles - small office (8 workstations on a peer-to-peer network. three laptops that go home & to the job sites - electrical contracting)
In the "old" days, I used to use PC Tools made by Central Point tools on my home computers.
Then, Symantec took them over, so I was forced to migrate to all of their products (SystemWorks, AntiVirus, Internet Security).
The Symantec products seemed to evolve every year into a mixed bag that never included everything that was needed, and some even seemed to do double coverage or to conflict with the other products - so I eventually found that I had Norton Password Manager, Norton SystemWorks and Norton Internet Securtiy - all seperate packages, installed on my laptop - my primary work computer.
I recently got a friendly "upgrade" notice for my Norton SystemWorks/ Internet Security bundle because my installed version(s) were expiring.
I tried to pay attention to all the glitze and glamour that Symantec bundles for "free" within their packages, but by the time I had followed all the installation instructions - requiring me to uninstall "previous versions", etc. etc. etc., I was pretty frustrated.
What had happened:
The latest & greatest NIS 2007 no longer shows a unique "Norton Antivirus" tab - although their tech support folks tell me that it "infers" that the antivirus program exists.
My Norton Ghost, part of the older Norton SystemWorks Premier package, was gone (I used it to weekly backup to an external hard drive.)
The "new" NSW (Norton System Works) no longer displayed an "antivirus" scanner.
Attempting to get to the bottom of things with Symantec only proved more frustrating, especially when one of their tech folks recommended that I by yet another of their products just to get back to where I was before I started on this journey.
I then took a look at the internet security & antivirus recommendations here at Experts Exchange as well as at Cnet & ZDnet, and decided to give Kaspersky AntiVirus 6 and ZoneAlarm Pro 6 a try. Both packages installed effortlessly and pretty easily seemed to configure - both at home on my 802.11g wireless, at the office 802.11g & 10/100 network connections. They also found our business network and faily easily were configured to allow me to get to work.
I then contacted an outside vendor that we use to do system maintenance at the office - both for hardware, software and networking - to get their opinion of what I had done. I asked if duplicating the Kaspersky/ ZoneAlarm package for our office would be OK - especially since two other computers had pop-ups reminding us that the installed Symantec packages were coming up for renewal.
His response was that Kaspersky, although not unknow, was so seldom used that he didn't recommend it (he "tongue in cheek" called it #17 on the block). He recommended that we look at McAffee or TrendMicro products - with more favorable recommendation on TrendMicro.
So .... we purchased two copies (each good for up to 3 computers) of TrendMicro PC-cillin Internet Security 2007.
I then attempted to install on one of the other laptops - running Win XP Pro SP2. It had originallly been shipped with McAffee, but we had installed NSW & NIS on it this calendar year. I used Control Panel - install/ uninstall to remove both products. I downloaded Symantec's seperate removal program to supposedly "scour" the system, and cleaned booted the computer.
Two different attempts to install both failed part way through.
I then used regedit to "find" and deleted all references to Norton, Symantec and McAfee and attemted yet another install of TrendMicro's product. Same failures at the same places in the process. Argggh.
Since ZoneAlarm Pro had installed on my personal laptop, I downloaded the 15 day free version of ZoneAlarm Internet Security (includes all the features of ZA Pro as well as an antivirus and spam blocker). Within 30 minutes, I had the software installed and configured - even self-detected the wireless in the office, as well as the network.. Pretty awesome by comparison to what I've recently experienced with both Symantec and TrendMicro.
Now, having done all of the above - what am I missing? Is this a good solution for the application?
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Thank you much. : )