NIS 2008

Call Symantec Customer Service to plead your case
Telephone varies from country to country.
In the USA, it's 1-800-441-7234.

 

I just gave NIS 2008 a little spin last week after using NOD32 3.0 for the last couple of months. I'm running Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

I also found it very light and with lots of good information. The GUI isn't bad, and overall I was pretty impressed.

But as Bunkhouse said, it did bother me that the program is so large on disk, even though it doesn't slow you down. And it doesn't do well in heuristic-based tests like those on av-comparatives.

I'm now trying Antivir Premium 8 and it appears to run fine so far. The GUI interface is pretty simple and doesn't give you as much control as NOD. Also not sure how effective the Webguard is compared to NOD's http scanning.

May go back to NOD32 and will definitely try the supposed kick-ass NIS2009.

 

It might not have done great in the latest test but in all the others tests it did well, av-comparative or av-test.org together. Do some research, don't base your opinion only one one test, look at the whole picture over time and you'l see their heuristics ain't bad at all. and please don't turn the thread into a "I tried NIS but now prefer X" thread that will get closed.

 

kinwolf, are you a moderator on this forum?

Because, quite frankly, I don't appreciate your tone of voice.

I have done a lot of research and have actually been very positive about NIS 2008.

It may have acceptable or good heuristics, but just not as good as a few others like NOD or Avira.

I am only trying to post useful information and have a dialog with others who have used similar products.

 

The following quotes keep popping up in my mind, I'm trying to bend my head around the fact why the people mentioned below get infected with this many malware while having Norton installed, especially in the 1st example when using only Yahoo Business mail.

Often I run secondary on-demand virus-scans with other scanners to double check how Norton is doing it's job, and so far I haven't run into any active virus problems yet.

 

Only yahoo mail. Using Internet Explorer. As far as I know, my father doesn't open porn pages.

 

please show screenshots of these findings.. missing 300+ worms

... i think someone is telling porkys.

 

You're free not to believe me. I don't have any reason to lie.
I can't give you a screenshot, since I deleted the files from the backup, and since my father's USB doesn't get infected anymore.
But all of my friends could tell similar experiences.

 

You probably won't find a thing Norton allegedly missed (and neither have I) unless your hidden agenda is to promote Kaspersky- and then you must pile on the criticism of Norton which has the market share Kaspersky wants a part of. Looking forward to NIS 2009.

 

HI Howard,Go for it Norton has made improvements on resources and still provide pretty good protection with low false positives and besides a free copy is a good deal.

 

then again bad experience is just bad experience.

 

I don't promote Kaspersky. If that was so, I would just show the bad sides of any antiviruses. But I don't. I just show my experience. There are some other antiviruses that I think are good, for the simple fact that they kept my system clean, and effectively removed malware. Norton was not one of those.
But what should I expect from you, you probably got a trial, kept it for 30 days and it looked good...
I judge from real life-experience, not 30 day trials, not reviews, not comparatives.

 

since you used Avira a program I think is known for false positives I don't know if what your saying is legit. 300? I'd buy 3...

 

Do you think a file called New Folder.exe in a folder named "New Folder" is legit? And what about data *user*.exe?

Those are CLEAR examples of worms. I don't think that they could be false positive, unless I had created myself all those .exe files. And I sure didn't.

 

Same here, although I've had my new PC for less than a week and my opinion so far is subjective due to the short time I've used it.

 

all conjecture...like I said I'd believe 3 not 300, some AV's are not good non are that bad...

 

A negative for NAV in 2006, and earlier, versions was its overhead and intrusiveness, especially with Norton Protection Center enabled.

Also, until recently, I ran only Win 2000, so I was not able to try the 2007/2008 versions, which I've heard are much better.

I purchased a Vista notebook on Saturday that came with a trial of NIS 2008.
As symantec is giving me a free 1 year license, I'll give it a whirl for a while.

I'll definitely disable anything in the Norton Protection Center that I do not want, if it can be disabled.

On my Win 2000 systems, I use Kav 6 and Kav 7, each of which is much lower overhead than NAV 2006.

 

around 30 variants in each folder.
10 folders.

30+10= around 300 in total (more or less 10 infections).

 

Depends on what you mean by "missed".

1. A number of years ago, I got careless, and temporarily turned off NAV (I forget which version), then whilst bored I clicked on a file to see what it was.

Boom! NAV formed that I had gotten infected by a virus, let's call this XYZ.
I dutifully went to the virus encyclopedia at SARC and found that SARC had an incorrect description for the virus. I called tech support, and they were incompetent, insisting the info was correct and charging me for th phone call.

I then went to a Virus encyclopedia at an othe AV company's web site, found th ecorrect info, and removed the virus. I was lucky, it was a simple virus to remove.

Of course, when the phone bill came, I did not pay it.

I consider this a miss because NAV misidentified the virus.

2. When I switched to KAV, a KAV scan did not find additional viri, but it did warn me about riskware that NAV did not. I consider those to be misses, if the programs had been malicious, well ...!

 

Not to mention that ALL reviews/comparisions I've seen do not even look at the destructiveness of some AV software. For example, in at least the two versions I tried, a well known AV software silently deletes files and you have no option to turn that off.

With the first version of that product, I dared not scan the system.
With the next version, as I had started using image backups, I scanned the system. I do note recall the exact numbers, but somthing like 14 files were flagged, either 2 or 12 were deleted, I forget which. Bye thee waye, this unnamed product is pre-installed on lots of computers, no, it's not Norton.
So, unless this problem has been fixed in the more recent releasesm ...!

Such an issue MUST be raised in any comparison.

 

To no one in particular and as requested earlier, let's re-focus the discussion back to "Opinions on NIS 2008 on Vista?" and discontinue the non productive comparison discussion Please.

 

Howard, if you are running 32 bit you don't have to worry about the features I listed. These features are present in a 32 bit install but not the 64. In fact the installer handles both versions. NIS is not a true 64 bit program however as its processes run in 32 bit mode (these are indicated with *32 in Task Manager).

 

i've got a few choics:

1. Use the serial number to activate whateve rHP pre-installed on my notebook.
2. Use the CD to install over the pre-installed critter.
3. Uninstall the pre-installed critter and then re-install from the PC

Hopefully, there will be a manual that covers this.
Of course if Symantec is sending me a CD, I expect that there will be no printed manual, so I should download the NIS 2008 manual.

 

What do you have installed presently?