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June 8, 2005 04:36 PM
Broken: Symantec phone support
CNet's Charles Cooper on Symantec phone support, and how it turned him into a "psycho-in-the-making."
flickr is a picture and video hosting software.Lickr was made by Mark H. It is just a page with words, to see wich word gets picked the most. Why do you think he says not to use the search.
Yes that tech support is very broken. $60 for a phone call. epson support is only $10.00 and D-link online support is free. They are probably trying to make up for buissness from Mcaffe and other free antivirus
Norton stinks anyway. Maybe this is more of my computer inexperience, but whenever i did a Norton scan, a) it took forever and b) when i told it to delete everything it found, it just beeped at me and said 'delete failed'. I don't use it anymore, just Ad-Aware Free Version. Which is faster, deletes everything and doesn't bug me with popups after i don't subscribe to the full version.
Bob: Norton is antivirus and Ad-Aware SE os just an Anti Spyware. In most cases viruses are muech worse then spyware
viruses != spyware
Unfortunately the general public is calling everything "viruses" these days, which leads to people thinking an antivirus program will clean everything including spyware, or AdAware will clean viruses. It ain't so.
Norton frustrates the bejeezuz out of me too.
1] When I my system crashed, and I went to reinstall my copy that I had downloaded (and paid for), they informed me you can't reinstall it from the online download version after one year. You need to buy the new upgrade. "What??? I paid a pretty penny for this software. Are you telling me I paid full price for a program that expires after a year??? No way pal." They caved.
2] For a piece of software so closely exposed to highly distraught users, it is astonishly cruel in its lack of usability:
- It's done its scan, but can't do anything about these dozen files. They are still a threat. My choices at this point are: Skip or Exclude. (WHAT??? Neither! NOW what do I do???)
- OK, I need to go check a few things. If I close this window, how will I ever get it back? Will I lose my list of threats??? (Pretty much, yeah.)
- What is this summary button? Sounds like it might be useful. Too bad it never seems to be active.
I feel like I'm using narcoleptic software!
"OK, Dave. I've completed my scan, I've found 86 threats. Now pay very careful attention if you want to save your computer. Whatever you do, you absolutely MUST...***ZZZZZZZZZ***...."
Norton used to drive me absolutely bonkers. What the heck good does it do when all it is capable of is informing me that I have 67 viruses that IT CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT? It can't delete them, it can't quarantine them, it can't deactivate them...it just can't do diddly squat about what I bought the damn program to do.
Now I use two competitor's products. Costs more, but both are MUCH easier to use, take less time, and between the two of them actually manage to ~GASP!~ GET RID OF FRIGGIN' VIRUSES! Wow, what a concept!
Money ain't everything, especially when you drop $70 on Norton and it doesn't even work.
That's for the two PCs at work that get attacked all the time. The Mac at home has no anti-virus at all and has never had a problem. That's a whole 'nother flamefest brewing right there, so I'll just leave it at that observation.
ok, i have a firewall, norton scans my e-mails, so i should be safe from viruses, right? i told you the whole thing was probably my naivete' anyway. Yeah, Dave959756 and Hoki are describing my experience with the norton software.
Unknown- Ad-Aware is anti-spyware, but norton is definitely not anti-virus.
Dave- you paid for your Norton? I got like a 2-month subscription free with my computer, which I let expire in February. After that, for the next 3 months it would, every two weeks, give me a dialog window telling me to re-subscribe. My choices, at first, were- 1)Notify me in 7 days. 2) Notify me in 14 days. Only after I told Norton this for 3 months did it give me a 'Don't show this window again' box.
If you are looking for a free anti-virus software, I recomend AVG anti-virus from Grisoft.
For Spyware/Malware I recommend Ad Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Those two pieces of software work together.
What an amazingly broken customer experience. Waiting that long on the phone to get support is simply inexcusable. Having to fork over that much money to actually get any help is even worse.
As for alternative products, I've used AVG, but I prefer Avast which is free for invdividual consumers. http://www.avast.com/
I have avast in all my PCs. It is very easy to use. Mcaffe antivirus is pretty good. It isn't that expensive and allows you to actually DELETE viruses. Avast is very simple. You just have to press the > button and it starts scannibg.
I think i have said to much.
I personally don't use Symantec products, I use AVG anti-virus and now there's a firewall, even though it's a beta still. Download it from http://www.grisoft.com/doc/71/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 .
I also recommend for ad-ware and spyware Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy.
www.incenpr.com
Damn it, incepid is back. He was constructive this time and barely spammy, so you get a pass this time incenper
Unfortuantly i have to use Micro$oft firewall. I like Mcaffe's firewall but i have to pay for that and i do not have a lot of $$$ so i stick with free stuff like Avast and Ad-Aware SE
Avast ye shipmates! I have ye nortons firewall! I dunno if it does any good or not!
Thanks, Mr. Gomez, i'll try that.
There's some alarming ignorance on here.
To the person complaining that they can't reinstall a downloaded version more than a year old--your subscription ran out. Thus you aren't going to be able to get updates. That means that you're getting very second-rate protection.
To the person complaining about it nagging after the subscription that came with the computer ran out--that sounds like proper behavior to me. You're not getting your updates, it's not going to do a good job.
Not too long ago I was looking at a computer. Norton installed but when the subscription ran out he shut it up like you did. 16 viruses, all of them more recent than when his subscription ran out.
I installed Avast! but it didn't catch anything. that either means my firewall is good or Avast! sucks. Hopefully the former.
Comments on this entry are closed
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What is "Lickr?" The help link on that page doesn't work. Clicking a word shows the photo for that word... why not just use picture thumbnails?
A homage to "flickr?" I've never heard of that before... and at least "flickr" shows picture thumbnails instead of a goofy field of words.
For the record, "search" and "advanced search" is also broken. ... not a very good showing for a website called "this is broken."
Posted by: James Schend at June 8, 2005 07:52 PM