Posted 01/06/2009 at 08:41:03pm

Great article and useful comments, too. The comments led me to realize that I'd really not paid attention to the part on Norton. Like many of you, both Symantec products and technical support--should be called technical aggravation--left me repeatedly dissatisfied (to say the least).

But comments, and re-reading, caused me to question my bias about this new version. So, I downloaded it and tried to install--tried. Error message: Zone Alarm Pro is incompatible with NIS 2009. Well, OK, maybe NIS has it's own firewall. So, I then downloaded NAV 2009. Same error message.

And what is the solution offered (for both products) by the installer? Uninstall Zone Alarm Pro. I realize that installers don't have a sense of humor, so no joke. One might accept such arrogance from a company with a stellar track record. My experience with Symantec is anything but.

Still, maybe the message is simply terse, and I can reinstall Zone Alarm after installing NAV 2009? (I know, I'm hopelessly optimistic.) I waded through the chat support swamp but they confirmed that the products are incompatible. I can accept that *this* version is super new & improved. But in a battle for supremacy between two products, where one has a fairly solid history of reliability and the other has consistently elicited my contempt... You get my drift.

My conclusion: New product perhaps, but same old company.

Ironic punchline: the process of uninstalling current antivirus, attempting to install two products, and finally returning to baseline was all made much simpler by...Norton GoBack, a product that has served me flawlessly going all the way back to when WildFire first released it and is now slowly dying in the Symantec graveyard of purchased product lines.

Posted 09/29/2008 at 04:52:22am

Another reason this article is so timely: while Partition Magic is still a breeze to use, last time I checked, it isn't supported in Vista. Because Symantec remains a graveyard where old, good software is purchased and then allowed to die, I'm not hopeful they'll update it.<sigh> I'm still using XP but the days seem to be numbered for at least 2 software products I've depended on for years.