Okay well if it was Feb, then even more shame on Norton. I also remember the old days. I used ZoneAlarm or Black Ice as my first line of defense and left Norton to clean up the AV stuff but not to depend on it. I was way toooooo slow to install and so crash prone. Sadly Black Ice got too confident or did something that you couldn't tell if they were even bothering with updating the software. So I switched over to ZoneAlarm which was getting rave reviews back then, while Norton tried giving so many different names to it security suite and versions of it, some with anti-spam, some didn't, some premier some basic, so pro some not, you get the picture.
I don't remember what year 2009, 2008 or 2010 that they switched to the current installation method. I was blown away by how easily it installed, not to mention speed. They also did away with the "I see you have this program, remove it if you ever want me to install" end to install. The biggest pain is that to truely uninstall the old NIS, you had to run the NRnR tool, which of course removed all your Norton apps, including ghost and NU, not to mention you had to redo ALL your rules.
They bought PC Tools, I assume to get at the patented tech. they were using probably in their Spyware Doctor and ThreatFire, which also were two very outstanding programs, just that threatfire could be cruel to you sometimes, aka crash, bsod, blocking the safe apps, etc. If you watch how NU now updates, it uses the screen that PcTools used. Whats worse you don't hear anyone talk about Spyware Doctor anymore. When I saw Norton had bought them, I knew PCTools days were numbered despite what Norton released in press statements. Their tech support which was superior to whatever Norton had and now has. However PCTools tech support now has gone the way of the dodo bird. It is awful that I finally pulled all the remaining apps from them off of my systems and advised all my clients to do so as well. See I am also a private computer consultant (buyer/adviser/builder/etc) but I keep my client list manageable as I know growing too big will result in poor support for them and hence I lose them and their reference to new clients.
You might see a PCTool product in a sale paper but nothing like they were in the past. Either Norton bought them to snag the tech they had and then would let them rot on the vine so they could then justify to shut the subsidiary down or this one I don't believe, they would allow PCTools to compete against them. I got my MBA and in majority of the cases of a merger/buyout/A's with or without mergers, it is to remove a challenger, tear apart their computers, codes, safe and gain all the knowledge to add to their product line. Seldom do companies allow those they bought remain in the market, if they do they reduce them to a "budget" line of products to be sold in the Wal-Marts and CVS's, where Norton knows its not worth it to them to try and enter a very tight and limited space and units sold market. This is sad as PcTools was a great little company, especially with Spyware Doc, Threatfire and its various utilities. Remember a company called Powerquest - where Partition Magic reigned, not any more.
Norton has relied on its ability to gulp up the competition, like (sorry Star Trek reference) the Borg and assimilate what is good and dispose of the waste. Remember Quarterdeck (qemm386, cleansweep)? They were assimilated (of course their major product which was designed to manage memory mostly for dos was in decline with Win 95 and computers getting larger and larger capacity memory sticks and storage.
In regards to AllenM's comments,
I am running on 3 years now for my WinXP install. I only moved to SP3 on my machines late 2010 early 2011, to make sure things were stable and safe to move (as some hardware makers said they had no sp3 drivers and hence were not going to support sp3 until they had drivers - which of course now is resolved. My XP sp3 machine, which I still like using, sadly takes about 3 1/2 to 4 minutes to boot (and no I am not letting every app that I installed startup on boot up :) ). I too have my program count in the 100's and my games *cough* test programs in the 350 plus range taking up about 2.5TB, and with dosbox I have to assume my Windows 7 machines will eventually start to choke on dos and windows apps and test programs. That is why it is always special when I first start installing on a new machine. That fast, really fast bootup you get. I use to update all my machines on a yearly basis, usually tied with the release of new security software and/or change of OS. Thank goodness for google and the hundreds of help websites.
I just feel bad to see Norton going this way. After they made the move to the swifter install and less of a resource hog, I made a full committment to them as my primary line of defense. Now that faith and loyalty has been shaken to its very core. I am seriously considering what I just advise someone else on these message boards to do and not buy 2013 till those who are swindled into updating to 2013 serve as real world beta testers (yes I know they are beta testing but just how many people want to put their personal, private, confidential and financial information behind the "beta" still in development where some features might not be working yet version - I have Win8 Preview on a totally disconnected computer and lets just say I see another Windows ME Windows Vista cycle occuring again). The race to always make things fancier, quicker, "neater", new tricks, etc. always leads to the same problem as putting a deck of cards and then turning on the fan, it will blow down.
People have said their interface is one of the cleanist and best on the market, and underneath the hood the same praise. Yes they want to be the fastest at scanning, the least resource hog, the least this and the fastest that. However did they really think out the code before they threw it all together. There was a news story a few years back where they said we are going to hit a major code issue in the next decade or two. Since most companies do not totally go back to scratch with their code, they clean it up, with the help of those who coded it. Well as those people retire, pass-away, etc there is no one there to tell them exactly was going on as they failed to really document their actions (which you can see superbly maintained websites when you view their coding, they put notes in as many parts of their section as to what this section is going to do). Perhaps Norton tried to slim the code to make things faster and tried to pull one too many support columns from their building. It is holding but this one part of the building (Program Controls) they recommend no one go jumping around in there.
And Yes I do hope MS will also get their act together see the mess they made with Win8, provide a Win7 compat switch to get totally out of Metro and back to what users want, slimmer faster more efficient managment of their apps, web access, and gaming, without having to back to school and learn how this interface designed for a phone is now their way they interface (they never bothered to obviously survey anyone about if the think this could work on a desktop, no they wanted a piece of the pie that apple ipad has and since Intell still can't beat the power sipping of ARM's and ARM can't beat the speed of Intel and with ARM's in almost everything but desktops, MS saw the writing on the wall and to trim cost they figured hey lets release a universal version of Windows that all acts and works the same across ALL devices. MS needs to focus on the problem areas that have followed them version to version, like the uninstall and total removal of programs from the registry and the hard drive including changes made by patches. We should not have to rely on install registry monitoring programs, registry tools, and uninstall tools from 3rd parties like Revo Uninstaller Pro. Right now the latest rumor is that MS is going to leave bringing back much of the Win7 interface to third parties like Stardock - it is now truly raining cats and dogs. I have joked that MS wants to microtransaction or micro-app us to death. Soon you will have to pay a fee to download the Shut Down feature for Windows, the trial version for 20 shut downs, after which you must pay $6.99 to unlock the program or risk damaging your install by manually turning the computer off.
But back to Norton WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST FIX THIS THING SO I CAN GO BACK TO WORRYING ABOUT MICROSOFT OS and NOT MY FIREWALL, NOT MY AV, NOT MY ANTI-SPAM, NOT MY SECURITY SUITE WHICH IS SUPPOSE TO BE DOING ITS JOB WITHOUT ME HAVING TO GO TO TECH FORUMS WAITING FOR A FIX.
Sorry all caps just my way of screaming (yes I know all caps is screaming) my anger at this. The time wasted and time lost. This is why we don't like to have few competitors in a market as it creates a monopoly and the lack of innovation, price/cost savings and care about the customers, after all they have no choice (ask Arco, Chevron, and 100's of other companies who were the foster children of a company called Standard Oil - read your history, who got to big and the government finally did something and broke them up).
But I guess I should not be surprised that MS has so far refused to do this since their own uninstallers are guilty of the same thing! Can we really expect other vendors to do what's right when MS themselves won't?
