Symantec Sucks: NIS 08 installed on Vista desktop PC

2008-07-19

NIS 08 installed on Vista desktop PC

Well - there is 50 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

The first download was 0.5 MB. Once I found the executable file (under Public/Downloads) and executed it, it downloaded another 68.35 MB. After the first restart, it was noted that NIS 08 was not up-to-date and required an immediate 'Run Live Update' and another restart.

The grand totals are:
1) Almost an hour (skipping the recommended Full Scan)
2) Almost 70MB of downloading (not including the unknown LiveUpdate)
3) Two restarts

The long-standing issue of the world's most inefficient update process (downloading some 46 files to see if any downloads are required) has been addressed: they've hidden it.

Now there is a simple three-step process. Each step still takes forever and the progress is completely hidden. There is an animation, but you have no idea if the update will take 2 minutes or 20 minutes. This is substandard.

This new non-communicative LiveUpdate process also hides all of their can't-do-simple-math errors.

More later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Take a look at NIS 09 Beta

http://www.symantec.com/norton-beta/internet-security/; July 22, 2008 at 1:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Actually, I (like many other perfectly reasonable people) am a bit leary of betas in general. Why should I assist in the debug of commercial software?

Oh dear, I guess such debugging effort applies even to fully release commercial software such as NIS07. Sigh...; July 22, 2008 at 8:31 AM

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Symantec fanboy OkiNava wrote:

"For EVERY blog posting that SSBC posts there will be response from this blog."

In other words, he seemed to be very upset that I dared to criticize his favorite software company. So he promised the world that for "EVERY" post made here, he was going to post a rebuttal on his blog.

He posted three (3) rebuttals. Three.

That leaves about 125 rebuttals to go. LOL.

Perhaps he stumbled across some of the 'priceless' screen captures of blatent bugs and stupid errors and realized that there isn't really any rebuttal to that sort of documentary evidence.

OkiNava has another blog called "Norton Rocks". Almost rhymes with Northern Rock, a failed bank in the UK. Or perhaps he spelled "...Sucks" wrong.

Face facts. Norton Internet Security 2007 edition was indefensibly bad. There's nothing to argue about. NIS 2008 was not much better. One might as well try to claim that Cambodian dictator Pol Pot "was simply misunderstood."

For every action there is a reaction. Symantec screwed up big time with NIS 2007. This blog is a direct consequence of their terrible mistakes and incompetence.

Since they've never explicitly admitted that they sold horrible software and wasted the time of many people, then this blog will remain a semi-permanent record of their utter failings.

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