Symantec retires the PC Tools brand

http://www.pctools.com/

I see they finally pulled the plug on all PC Tools products. Another one of Symantec's "bug fixes". Oh well, they had a good run.

 

From the FAQs... this is rich

 

It sounds like they will continue to support the PC Tools products and provide updates for the AV/AS.

 

That is definitely not what I got from reading that statement.

 

It seems to me that the perpetual license implies sig updates. Can't you keep using PC Tools AV after the license expires, just without updates? I wouldn't expect them to keep updating the apps though, but that's just my take. Someone "in the know" will have to chime in.

 

You're probably more correct on this than I am, Victek.
Further reading in the FAQs provides this:

 

Good find. Sounds like it's not "abandon-ware" yet. Still it's a drag for people who like the PC Tools products. I used their free firewall for quite a while and it seemed to do a good job.

 

I suppose I reacted to their use of the term "perpetual", as in...

We see that support continues for a prescribed amount of time, but perpetual to me conjures up images of an eternal flame, or something.

 

Ah, as in the "tomb of the unknowns" - I get it

 

It's a shame. I used to install PC Tools' Firewall on computers for people who couldn't manage complicated security systems. It always went on easily and generally provided good protection without the user having to have a degree in computer science to figure out what's going on.

 

About time, it was already dead since a couple years ago.

 

So what did Symantec really gain from this acquisition, enterprise accounts in the region?

 

"Customer support" only means the chat and phone lines will be active till then. Bug fixes are going to be rare since the team probably no longer exists or has been merged into some other team. For the security products, signature updates are continuing for now but no patches or updates have been released for any of their products since 2012. So yeah, the products are pretty much dead now.

 

Two years without updates is a long time for security software. At this point some of the current free products may provide better protection.