[Macworld]

Post your comments for Norton AntiVirus begone! here

[Grapho]

Symantec must be one of the worst software companies ever. NAV for PC is also junk. Windows is unstable as it is, now imagine installing something that actually makes it worse. We went with an alternative solution and it has been pretty solid for us for the past two years. Never will I give a penny to Symantec agian, ever.

[jamus]

The PC consumer version of Symantec has seen a big improvement this past year, however the corp edition "Endpoint" is a possessive piece of bloat that I do not care for. As for the Mac version... blah is the best I can offer it.

[Grapho]

You might be right, but for us Symantec already lost our business. We have the AV thing covered by Web Root. No problems since we made the switch.

[bastion]

Grapho said:

Symantec must be one of the worst software companies ever. NAV for PC is also junk. Windows is unstable as it is, now imagine installing something that actually makes it worse. We went with an alternative solution and it has been pretty solid for us for the past two years. Never will I give a penny to Symantec agian, ever.

While it's something that a depressing number of companies in and outside the computing industry do, Symantec has to be the champion at acquiring great companies/products and turning them into utter dreck.

[webraider]

That's too bad. Norton Antivirus for Mac version 11 Works very well. In fact, I've never had a version that didn't work well, although I never upgraded quickly. This version is faster and doesn't seem to be a resource hog. I didn't notice any difference in computer speed when I installed it than when it wasn't on. I do however, customize my installations to only scan the downloads folder, and email inboxes. I don't really have any other place that I download stuff to. You can limit NAV's functionality and that may be why I don't have problems with it. All it does automatically is scan the downloads folder. It does what it's supposed to never had a virus or a problem.

[ElectroTech]

I gave up on NAV a year ago because it seemed to make my Mac run s l o w. It takes up too many resources and spent its time trying to convince me that it was actually doing something.
I began to wonder if the 'cure' was worse than the virus. After a laborious effort, I finally removed the money and time wasting garbage (NAV which is not supposed to be a virus) off of my machine and it runs beautifully now.
Don't fall prey to these 'snake oil' salesmen!

[SuperMac]

Sometimes I think of Norton AntiVirus as malware - its so hard to get rid of it.

[DPG4450Guy]

I've put NAV 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11 on dozens and dozens of Macs and have never had a single issue with it.
The major thing to remember is to install it at the base level of a clean install (good idea to do the same with 3rd party firewalls, too.) If you stick it on an install that is good enough to be running, but whacked in some way, it may indeed cause trouble. Maybe, because I've never seen it, but I'll grant you that much.

[mikeromo]

hey there--
Mike Romo here--I'm the product manager for the Mac products at Symantec. If it is Norton AntiVirus that's messing up your Mac, I apologize--and even if it's not us, still--super frustrating.
So, if it IS our product, well, you already know how to uninstall it (the uninstaller should be in your Symantec Solutions folder), but I'd thought I'd speak up to try to figure out what was going on.
First thing's first: we scan inside archives by default. This can take awhile because we have open up the archive, scan the contents, then re-archive the file. Takes awhile because there are can be a lot of archives on a disk. So, you might want to turn that off--you can do so in the AutoProtect preferences (turn off the "scan compressed files" option). We'll still scan the files when expand the archive. We have that option turned on because it's more secure, but it does slow scans down. We do have a scheduler that allows you to scan at more convenient times (it even has a snooze function) that might work for you.
You say it's bringing your machine to a crawl--are you using the machine during a system scan? Yes, the machine runs slower when you are doing a scan, but if you are just running normally with Auto Protect turned on, you really shouldn't be having any problems. When you look in Activity Viewer, what are you seeing?
Anyway, I hope that Norton AntiVirus was not the culprit. If uninstalling makes your machine run faster, please let me know at mike_romo@symantec.com -- I would love to figure out what the issue was with your machine. Look, I run the software all the time, on several machines--I've been a Mac user since 1985 (so I know the whole rap that people have against Symantec with older products, believe me, I was a Mac IT guy and consultant for years) and I am not going to release software that munges up your machine. If there is a problem--we fix it.
If any of you have problems with our software, we have forums here: community.norton.com/norton/ (there is a Mac specific forum starting up soon, within a few days) or you can post on the "other software" forum. Or, you can email me at mike_romo@symantec.com. I would love to hear from you---if we are slowing your machine down (pretty easy to figure out what is going on with your machine by looking at the Activity Monitor), I want to know about it.
thanks--
mike

[mikeromo]

I forgot to add--the scan compressed files option is set in Auto-Protect for the ongoing protection (so, if you download a .zip file, it would be opened, then scanned) but for regular scans you scan set that in the Norton AntiVirus:Preferences.

thanks for reading.

mike

mike_romo@symantec.com

[webraider]

Umm.. I'm a school teacher, not a salesman for Symantec. At any rate, do you guys actually read the manual? Do you actually know how to set it up? OMG, I look in system resources and on a regular basis NAV takes NO ADDITIONAL resources. It only does this if you run a manual scan of everything and the ONLY time to do that is if your system is infected. In that case, leave it on over night. If your whole computer is a Safe Zone then it will take up more resources, so set your zone to your downloads folder and email inboxes and your good. I don't have mine scan additional volumes that are connected as I don't need to. These are all things that are turned on by default that you can turn off. It's not rocket science.

[mikeromo]

Good suggestions with the SafeZones--we added that feature because users wanted more flexibility with their scanning preferences. One good setup is to just scan your Desktop and Downloads folder with Auto-Protect, and then, if you want, schedule a scan once a week or month, whatever. If you deal with a lot of documents, add your Documents/Work folder to that list.



Also you may want to turn off the "Scan Disk on Mount" option if you plug in external devices a lot. It works great for USB thumb drives but if you are constantly plugging in your 80GB iPod or 500GB Time Machine drive, well, then, that scan could take some time.

Different users have different requirements, which is why we try to make the product features customizable.



thanks,

mike

mike_romo@symantec.com

[501user]

Quote

I'm a school teacher, not a salesman for Symantec. At any rate, do you
guys actually read the manual? Do you actually know how to set it up?
OMG ...

You're a teacher!

Do you speak to the children with such grace, charm, and politeness? They must love you.

There is virtually no malware for OS X out there, so almost nothing to guard against. This software can only slow the machine and/or cause additional problems for no conceivable benefit, and is known to do so. It needs an uninstaller to get it out of the system. In any case, the very concept of antivirus software is flawed:

www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/antivirus/index.html

In addition, the Norton software has left people's OS X machines MORE vulnerable for long periods, owing to a privilege escalation vulneability that was in it:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=osx%20norton%20privilege%20escalation&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8]



Please allow people not to use this product without abuse.