Other Norton Products

[slingload]

I am thinking of switching from Acronis True Image Home to Norton Ghost. I noticed that Ghost 15 was released last November. Is there any word if a new version is coming soon? Does Ghost typically get a new version each year around the same time?

[redk9258]

I've been wondering myself. It seems like it's more like every 18-24 months.

I'm curious about what new features they might add. I really think they should add Restore Anywhere. A revamped partitioning GUI in the recovery environment would be nice too. The one they have now is kind of confusing. An updated virus scan tool that can be easily updated would be a nice feature. The ability to easily add portable programs to the SRD would be nice too.

[slingload]

If Restore Anywhere allows you to restore to dissimilar hardware, then that feature would seal the deal for me.

My fear is that I would have a current system image and then my motherboard would die. If I replace (or upgrade) it to a different board, especially if it is a different chip set, then I am not sure how I would recover my data. A feature like Restore Anywhere would eliminate my worries.

I created a feature request for this in the Product Ideas section. Vote for it there so it hopefully gains the attention of the developers.

[philipm785]

As somebody kindly pointed out to me recently, Symantec Backup Exec System Restore Workstation 2010 is available at Amazon and NewEgg in the $50 range. It's just like Ghost, but includes Restore Anywhere.

Wish I'd realized this BEFORE buying Ghost 15! I do think Ghost is a very solid product overall, but the Restore Anywhere option would be great to have. perhaps you should just go the BESR2010 route instead?

[slingload]

I might have to give BESR a try once my Ghost trial is up. Since Ghost and BESR appear to have been released around November of last year, I'm trying to stretch out a purchasing decision until around that time this year in case a new version is released.

[redk9258]

You can look at Amazon to see the release dates of prior versions. I did this once but threw the paper away that I wrote it on.

[DaveH]

There is actually only a few consumer versions since Ghost 9 (The first with "hot imaging")

Ghost 9   August 2, 2004

Ghost  10 first available at Amazon.com: September 13, 2005

Ghost 12  first available at Amazon.com: August 9, 2006

Ghost 14  first available at Amazon.com: February 29, 2008

Ghost 15 November 2009

Ghost 11 was Ghost Solution suite and there was no version 13

[redk9258]

There was also...

Save and Restore  - January 23, 2007

and Save and Restore 2 -  February 19, 2007

Those dates don't seem correct. Too close together.

[philipm785]

In a recent thread about the recorvery disk requiring some users to insert a driver CD of some kind, a Symantec employee said that although a solution had been found it may still be another couple of months before it was released. The reason was that the development cycle was close to a major update and all the fixes had to be rolled into that update. It's possible that he was refering to Ghost 16, but I suspect this major update is a mid-life update for Ghost 15. It seems unlikely that Symantec would hold off patching a serious issue like that because they were waiting to make people upgrade to Ghost 16.

All that to say, it seems likely that Ghost 15 still has a few miles left on it.