[X Newbies] Norton SystemWorks 3.0 for Mac?

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 9:12 AM -0800 11/11/03, Paul Korntheuer wrote:
>Can anyone recommend Norton's SystemWorks for Mac 3.0?

Even among those that do recommend Norton products, the going wisdom 
is that you absolutely should NOT install any of 'em on your machine. 
Use them from he CD when necessary.

>  I'm in need of some serious hard disk defrag'ing and virus protection.

What is driving the need? There is little to show any significant 
benefit from the type of defrag that Norton performs. Good practice 
demands complete backup every now and then. Many just backup, 
reformat the drive and restore. Easy defrag in a couple of hours with 
little or no cost.

As for the virus protection, there are no viruses for OS X. But 
perhaps you're being a good citizen and eliminating the possibility 
of propagating viruses you've received. Or you're protecting your OS 
9 environment? Nevertheless, Norton products have competition worth 
investigation.

>  Any problems using it? Are there any better alternatives that are 
>price competitive?

Norton products have the reputation of being bad players in the OS X 
sandbox, with installation of items in unnecessary places or ways, 
not playing well with the others, and causing some grief during 
attempts at removal.

I have had absolutely no bad experiences with Norton under OS X. I 
attribute that to three things:
   1. Norton is my third resort, after the standard Apple tools and 
techniques and Disk Warrior.
   2. I NEVER install a Norton product.
   3. I use Norton products for diagnosis and repair, never in any 
attempt at preventative maintenance.

The first commercial tool in an OS X arsenal must be Disk Warrior. 
There is little trouble that can stand against a good backup regimen 
and Disk Warrior. I'd be loath to suggest a backup tool as choices 
and tastes abound. I've been successful with Carbon Copy Cloner after 
having been a Retrospect user from its first incarnation. They lost 
me with some early OS X teething pains (from which they appear to 
have rebounded nicely).

With no OS X viruses to act upon, the virus tool arena is a 
marketers' playground. VirusBarrier seems the least reality-defying 
but may not do anything for those critters that are just passing 
through on the way to a vulnerable non-Mac operating system.

i believe that there's more to be gained from the mailing lists, 
helpful online forums and many low-price shareware tools than from 
any of the commercial tools suites other than Disk Warrior. Many of 
those latter seem like big reputations searching for a stake.
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]