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Symantec Wants Another Chance

Thursday, August 28th, 2008
by Ron Schenone

Back on August 1st, 2008, I wrote a review of Norton’s newest Anti-Virus program coming at us for the 2009 computing season. [See review here.] I tried the beta version and found that it was in fact faster and less intrusive than previous versions. I also stated that I would recommend the product and asked readers to give it a try.

So this afternoon while surfing the web, I found this article of interest from ZD-Net Australia in which Symantec was asking for another chance. But what stood out in the article was this statement from Symantec’s VP of consumer engineering, Rowan Trollope:

A lot of folks will say I’ve given [Symantec] a chance, but I’d certainly ask everyone to give us another chance.

Which brought up this thought. Why should we? Why should we we plunk down our cash on a software that has been more of a pain in the rump than most other software’s? Why should we trust Symantec since we have all heard hollow promises in the past, only to find disgust in the lack of technical support provided by the company? There are more why’s but you get my drift.

So what do you think? Is it time to forgive and forget?

Comments welcome.

Source.

9 Comments

Kevin Bailey

August 28th, 2008
at 3:41pm

I have forgiven and forgotten. Symantec who??

Avast and AVG been there for years now.

george

August 28th, 2008
at 8:22pm

i agree with kevin, in my opinion symantec is kind of out of the picture. first of all, they didnt have good support, and their program was horrible. why should we pay them now, when we get get good stuff like avast for free!?

AvaChava

August 29th, 2008
at 3:03am

I got it off my last computer (XP) and was more than happy with AVG Free. Norton acts like a big nanny and tries to take over your entire computer life, not to mention being a resource hog. Much to my chagrin, the latest version of this disaster came pre-installed on my new Vista machine. I decided to give them another chance. Big mistake. Same story as before, only now bloated beyond all recognition, ineffective, expensive (nagware began their usual blackmail efforts), intrusive. Mercifully, an IT friend recommended ESET and I was able to remove the Symantec crapware from my new machine. Life is good.

Cliffystones

August 29th, 2008
at 6:07am

I dumped Symantec products back in my Windows 98 days. This was soon followed by ridding myself of things like Adobe Acrobat Reader, Windows media Player, and Real Player.

Like others have noted, these folks simply don’t get it. Usually “free” means “strings attached”, but the best stuff out there for PC’s is the free ware. And the commercial stuff is the most bloated and problematic.

Rick

August 29th, 2008
at 6:26am

Consumers have a long memory. That fact alone is usually sufficient to deter a vendor from screwing with their customers. But some vendors have huge egos and higher degrees of arrogance than their market position warrants. Can Symantec actually believe they can quickly regain consumers’ trust, or is it just wishful thinking.

The list of previously fine software that has been ruined or killed by Symantec grows longer by the day:

AtGuard personal firewall
Ghost
Delrina Winfax
PowerQuest Partition Magic, Server Magic, Drive Image
Veritas Backup Exec