[dreyfus]

Macworld said:

One company?s name springs to mind when it comes to antivirus products: Symantec.

Geez, did they pay for that? Having managed hundreds of corporate PCs over years, that is the only name that will never come to my mind even once (only in nightmares), Network Associates, Kaspersky, AVG, etc. do. The only good product Symantec ever had was Ghost and they let it rot.

So, all you need nowadays for 4 1/2 mice is a product that is at least not worse than its predecessor, needs over 3 hrs to scan 170GB on a top notch machine and throws stupid dialogs at you (do you really want to...?). Arrrggglll.

Now, if the author could provide some facts... 1) What was the CPU load using the previous version and what is the CPU load now. 2) Is this finally a Symantec product that can be uninstalled without creating complete havoc (that would be news) and 3) stating there are only a few viruses for OS X, please name a single one (I am not talking about trojans, worms, etc., he said viruses).

[SlimJim]

I switched to a Mac a little over a year ago, and don't run any AV program, but, if I did, it wouldn't be Norton. In my years as a PC user the comments from friends and many articles/blogs about Norton were mostly unfavorable. I never used it personally, but with all the negative comments about Norton I never wanted to.

[Kingteddybear]

Started using the Norton Utilities way back in the Tandy 1000TX DOS days. Used them until installing Norton 2003 on a rock solid stable Windows machine that suddenly wasn't nearly as stable. Complained enough to get a refund from Symantec and went with Trend Micro for while. Still thinking about installing AV software on my iMac, so I don't feel naked, but it will not be Norton. Yes, after four months on an iMac "rock solid stable Windows" does sound oxymoronic.

[Biallystock]

I think everyone here except the original author have Norton's measure.
I will NEVER, EVER, EVER install a Norton product on any Mac or PC I own. The problems it causes are legend and I will never forgive them for causing the lose of entire backup portfolio on a "known" issue, that they couldn't be bothered emailing to their users.
Their excuse was we can't email our users on "everything". "Everything" being things that are dangerous, but not the incessant stream of sales material they flooded my inbox with.
Avoid NAV at all costs!

[NPJH]

I found that this review was a little more detailed than the one for 10.0, but thats not saying much. I should mention that on the Apple website the user review average is synonomous to two and a half mice. I saw little or now mention of fixes from the previous version, which I found very weak. The biggest problem in 10.0 that I found was that it would not scan every file. This was specifically true for files that it aparently did not have permission to scan (upper level files I think). I am running as an administrator. I always felt that if norton would ask for my password than it would've been fine. I have been told by expiereced software engineers that those files can be equally as vulnerable.

So where's mention of that or other problems with 10.0 that could have surfaced by now? Did you review the virus scan report to ensure that it scanned what you wanted it to? Where's a brief comparison to other similar programs outside of "its slightly slower"? Where's mention of how usefull it is in Mac only environments? Why does this feel like one of the shortest reviews on this site?

[Ilgaz]

If it really provides security exploit watching (still waiting for trial), it deserves higher mice than other products on Mac market.
I don't think anyone would pay for such a review, stop accusing people. Some people/companies actually need antivirus and macworld is reviewing for them.
Again, if it watches the threats before they make into OS X security update, if it has no performance issue, it deserves the rating. The one to blame is Symantec again. They should provide a no nags 7 day , 15 day trial which people can actually see if it works or not.

[bousozoku]

Charles Owen said:

i am hard pressed to remember ANY positive experiences with Norton products. My experience has found them to be highly intrusive, and very controlling. I really dislike a program that should be very much in the background constantly reminding me to do something to keep it happy. If I had a PC system crash, the first thing I would disable would be all the Norton products, and invariably that would solve the problem.

Other than that, they are great additions.

I believe that the last positive experience I had was around 1991 on MS-DOS. Neither the Mac versions nor the Windows versions were safe to be used although they were popular. After Symantec bought Mac Tools, they introduced CrashGuard. My machine crashed more after installing CrashGuard than before that.

I'd be surprised if NAV 11 is actually better or lighter on system resources. I'd first take my chances with Intego's VirusBarrier before seriously considering a Norton/Symantec product again.

[freefire]

Wow, I'm surprised at so many negative response. I've been using NAV since my PC days and found it to be good enough - with certain setting adjustments it didn't slow down my system too much. When I switched to Mac in 2002 I chose to use NAV too and it never given me any problems other than the occasional needs to disable it before installing something - which seemed to be no longer an issue since late 2005.

[SlimJim]

Hi Freefire. Yes, apparently NAV does work OK for some users?no way to tell how many, though. As I mentioned earlier, when people are blogging about Norton the preponderance of comments seem to be negative. In the PC club I belonged to?with about 120 members?before switching to a Mac, the feedback from members on Norton was predominately negative. Most?if not all?the members stayed away from Norton. But if it works for you, that's great...SlimJim

[chuckbo]

And I would pay for any antivirus program before I gave money to a sleazy company like Symantec.

I used to have their antivirus program, and when I bought it, it came with a guarantee for free virus updates. So what did Symantec do? They took the product, killed the name, and then sold the same program under a new name. That way, they could claim that their guarantee was no longer valid because the program it was for no longer existed, and they started selling the annual subscription service -- that used to automatically charge you if you didn't notify them in writing 90 days before the anniversary of the date it was turned on.

Sleazy.

[RESpatz]

My experience with Norton AntiVirus 11 is not as good as Scott's: Specifically, the program refuses the setting I made to avoid scanning my Time Capsule Backups, and every time Time Capsule starts a backup, Norton intrudes initially blocking as I am typing on my key board (making a sound that's perfect for the experience). I am forced to cancel this scan. Nothing I do succeeds in preventing this scan. Any ideas Scott?
I find the log it makes useless as there is very little information and not interactive as I would prefer. The log indicates it found a virus that it could not repair and quarantined it. Still looking for this virus(?)
Overall, I am disappointed. It's clumsy and I am trying to understand Scott's higher evaluation of the program and finding it difficult to agree with him.

[greho]

We ignore the issue of security, and pass it off to Windows users, at our peril.
This review, and many of the comments, should serve as an open invitation to hackers. Mac users won't even use half-baked freebie AV software! They'll sneer and say "We've got no viruses." That means hackers, when they do target our Macs, will succeed wildly. We leave our doors and windows open, and wait for the coming storm.
"NAV took more than three and a half hours to complete the initial scan of my 170GB of data." This is not a comparative evaluation. It's a number. How much time did subsequent scans take? Did Norton switch to a smart scan and bypass files it had scanned recently? We don't know. The author gives no space or ink to testing methodology.
Try harder: "NAV was installed on a two-year-old Mac Pro, a new MacBook, a new iMac, and a one-year-old MacBook Pro after each system was infected with 17 known variants of viruses and trojans currently in the wild. (So that the AV software has to deal with concurrent infections, since a compromised system is likely to be reinfected again and again. And we caught viruses in the wild, not just known test viruses.) Norton successfully removed... Norton did not successfully remove..." This is a comparative evaluation which would give some idea as to Norton's true effectiveness.
I would expect such testing to be applied to ClamXav and Intego Virus Barrier, as well.
Someone wrote that today's software won't pick up tomorrow's virus. This is also true. Where is the demand for heuristic detection, now common in the better Windows apps. There are AV packages that can catch new viruses BEFORE signatures are released, based solely on patterns of behavior.
If any Mac AV software is capable of this, I have yet to see it mentioned in any reviews.
Where are the industry comparatives, such as VB 100? And when will they be Mac-specific? Linux-specific rankings exist now, and the Mac OS has a broader user base than Linux, last I checked.
I am security conscious. I keep antivirus and firewall on at all times, even when behind a good hardware router. I use strong passwords, in spite of their dubious effectiveness.
When a successful drive-by infection attacks the Mac community, as will surely happen one day, Mac users will scream for better information.
So far, hackers trying to steal financial information have gone for low-hanging fruit, i.e. Windows, but that is bound to change. The above review reads like a press release from Symantec. I'm waiting for the day when Mac publications and Mac users take this subject seriously.

[Tom_Diola]

I hopy you're not holding your breath for us to embrace anti-virus software...

[greho]

Not really, no. Certainly not based on the majority of the comments here.

But then, I was really asking for higher standards for software and testing. None of the currently avaliable packages seem to inspire a lot of confidence. I can't blame anyone for avoiding what is currently available.

My work environment demands malware protection, however, so I am attempting to make an informed decision. So far, I haven't found a whole lot of help. And given the number of employees and customers who trust me with handling their data, I owe it to them to use the best practices and the best software I can get my hands on.

What other people do, how much risk they take, is their business. I prefer the safe approach.