Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?

[Macready]

Originally Posted by Defiant

Yea perhaps its because its meant for people who cannot afford a real antivirus package or those who just can't be arsed. The fact is AVG is not as good as the one's that cost. Well apart from Norton thats mostly used by NONE IT bods

AVG has detected stuff that programs like Kaspersky and Mcafee has missed before, but then again I keep them religiously up to date. And with all AV software theres going to be instances where stuff like detections and that overlap.

I wouldnt diss any of the "cheap" or free AV packages, as a website I remember reading, stated that theres nothing much more than prestige in buying a "paid" av package, in terms of functionality.

Business does differ though there I will agree.

[Stuartbe]

Avoid it at all costs !!

I have had nothing but problems with it.

[andygrif]

Wow...so much opinion on one program!

I think it would be fair to say that no IT professional likes Norton software aimed at the home user. This is becuase it takes away the 'fiddle' that they so love!

I'm not an IT professional, but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty with the stuff. I've used System Works for a couple of years now, and 2003 was a fine piece of software. Not a problem running under XP Pro.

I tried 2004. As someone eluded to, it's far too much of a processor hog, and offers very little really useful stuff over 2003. Same goes for NIS and NAV. I've just paid for a year of updates for NAV and NIS, rather than upgrade to 2004, which is a little flaky.

Also, I've tried McAffee products over the years too. I cannot recommend at all any instance where I would ever let anything made by McAffee touch any of my hardware ever again, ever!

And from the accounts I've read recently, their new stuff is rubbish too!

So the bottom line is that NSW 2003 will be good for you if you want a reasonably hands-off experience of system monitoring and protection. One thing that bloody annoys me however, is that it keps claiming your HDD is fragged by a ludicrous amount, when it isn't.

Turn this feature off, and us XP's Defrag, or better still invenst in a standalone product to do the job properly.

Anotehr note....processor monitoring won't work on dual processor systems. Well that's OK you might say, and you might be right - but this also means that feature won't work on P4's with Hyper Threading, as it treats the single processor as two. Not that you'd need that feature anyway.

[Ramrod]

I think mcafee 2004 av and firewall are excellent