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Symantec AV (vs Norton AV)

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 1:49 pm
by jpjones~ogr
I'm just wondering if anyone has questioned the use of Norton AntiVirus software on church PC's? If so, I'd like to review the answers given.

My experience is that Norton is not only a burdensome resource hog, but at least moderately ineffective compared to several other options available. I'm guessing that Norton is offering a relatively low price per unit, however in my opinion, quality of results for this type of software is far more important.

JJ

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:27 pm
by techgy
jpjonesxyz wrote:I'm just wondering if anyone has questioned the use of Norton AntiVirus software on church PC's? If so, I'd like to review the answers given.

My experience is that Norton is not only a burdensome resource hog, but at least moderately ineffective compared to several other options available. I'm guessing that Norton is offering a relatively low price per unit, however in my opinion, quality of results for this type of software is far more important.

JJ
Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) is provided with the Desktop 5.5 system for Administrative PC's. I haven't seen any discussion regarding using anything else.

Disclaimer: From my own experience I've found other products that are more effective without putting as much of a load on the PC as NAV does.

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:40 pm
by aebrown
jpjonesxyz wrote:... the use of Norton AntiVirus software on church PC's?
Just so we keep our terminology straight, we are talking about Symantec AntiVirus. Yes, it is based on the Norton AntiVirus product that Symantec acquired many years ago, but Symantec continues to sell a product called Norton AntiVirus that is distinct from the Symantec AntiVirus product. The Church does not use Norton AntiVirus.

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:41 pm
by russellhltn
There's Symantec and then there's Norton. One is enterprise-level and one is typically home-based. I would not confuse the two. I have heard a lot of complaints about Norton but haven't used it myself since leaving Win95 behind. I have seen many businesses use Symantec AV and use it at work with few (but not zero) complaints. I do prefer it over some of the other enterprise level programs I've seen.

At the unit level, Symantec is the standard provided by the church to run on Administrative and FHC computers. I see nothing to suggest that local leaders have the discretion to change this.

I think your question is aimed at the corporate level, why is the church using Symantec. Unfortunately most of us here are community folks, not church employees. I will point out that Symantec AV is a common program found in the enterprise and the church manages their computing assets like an enterprise.

Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 2:42 pm
by techgy
Alan_Brown wrote:Just so we keep our terminology straight, we are talking about Symantec AntiVirus. Yes, it is based on the Norton AntiVirus product that Symantec acquired many years ago, but Symantec continues to sell a product called Norton AntiVirus that is distinct from the Symantec AntiVirus product. The Church does not use Norton AntiVirus.
My age is showing :rolleyes:

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:11 am
by crislapi
jpjonesxyz wrote:I'm just wondering if anyone has questioned the use of Norton AntiVirus software on church PC's? If so, I'd like to review the answers given.
JJ
I don't know if this is the type of questioning you were looking for, but here's a post about what, in my opinion, results in a major flaw with the current antivirus. Namely, it does not automatically update. So unless you have a motivated clerk who keeps up on it, the antivirus just has the default virus database.

This may not be a problem for dial-up connections, but as more wards switch to broadband, it become more and more of an issue.

As for taxing the system, yes, my personal experiences with Norton agree. However, the antivirus version included with Desktop 5.5 is not bad. Of course, maybe that's because I only use MLS on those computers...

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:54 am
by mkmurray
crislapi wrote:As for taxing the system, yes, my personal experiences with Norton agree. However, the antivirus version included with Desktop 5.5 is not bad. Of course, maybe that's because I only use MLS on those computers...
Again, this discrepancy could be because we are talking about two completely different offerings from (essentially) the same company. What is on Desktop 5.5 is the enterprise Symantec offering. It is not the personal home use offering called Norton. Norton was acquired by Symantec and so the implementation of the two antivirus solutions could be quite different.

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:02 pm
by RetamalesDA
Techgy wrote:Norton Anti-Virus (NAV) is provided with the Desktop 5.5 system for Administrative PC's. I haven't seen any discussion regarding using anything else.

Disclaimer: From my own experience I've found other products that are more effective without putting as much of a load on the PC as NAV does.


Well, my personal experience, im using on my personal PC the NORTON Antivirus version for Home use, and i experienced a lot of load on the PC, especially when the Real Time Virus Scan Service is running.

In the church PC`s, using the enterprise symantec version, i see the same, when the process rtvscan.exe is running the PC`s gets a lot of load.

I'm searching for other antivirus sofware that use less system resources, for use on my personal computer.

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:26 pm
by techgy
RetamalesDA wrote:Well, my personal experience, im using on my personal PC the NORTON Antivirus version for Home use, and i experienced a lot of load on the PC, especially when the Real Time Virus Scan Service is running.

In the church PC`s, using the enterprise symantec version, i see the same, when the process rtvscan.exe is running the PC`s gets a lot of load..
Take a close look at the amount of RAM that the PC's in the Church have. Anything below 512MB is going to slow things down considerably. I would recommend 1 GB or more. I increased the RAM on 3 of the pc's in our stake a few months ago and had a noticeable increase in response.

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:38 pm
by RetamalesDA
Techgy wrote:Take a close look at the amount of RAM that the PC's in the Church have. Anything below 512MB is going to slow things down considerably. I would recommend 1 GB or more. I increased the RAM on 3 of the pc's in our stake a few months ago and had a noticeable increase in response.

All the PC`s in our stake have 1 GB of RAM, i'm wondering if exists the way to disable the rtvscan.exe process, this process start to run when the PC is recently started, and if some one want to use MLS the system gets slow, very slow.

The only solution that i see, is just wait that the process ends their work, and then run MLS.