Symantec

As I have new toy (MacBook), I need new software for it. As I’m a little paranoid about security (yeah, I know, there are no viruses on Mac) I’ve wanted to add some antivirus to my new system. I’ve worked with many such programs in the past, so I know that sometimes (or mostly) it happens that they’re slowing down computer. I’m new to Mac OS and very happy already about it performance, so I don’t want to ruin it. Obvious thing for me was to try some trial version, before I would buy it. As I’m using Norton on my desktop PC I’ve wanted to buy Symantec product also for Mac, I’ve didn’t noticed any trial version on their website, but didn’t gave up and called support. They’ve told me that indeed there is no trial, but I can buy it and return it if I’m not satisfied in 60 days. OK, it’s not bad I thought and was planning to buy it as soon as I would get back from work. When at home I’ve recalled that Kaspersky was about to release antivirus for Mac, so I’ve checked their site and yeah, there was trial. I’m using it right now and didn’t noticed any slowness (well, system is starting up and shutting down a little longer), so I would probably buy it after 30 days trial. Even though it’s 10$ more expensive than Norton.

This is the title of an article from wired.com, which happens to be my favorite magazine. But this particular article is trash for me. Mainly it’s about how netbooks (like Asus EEE PC) are vulnerable for network attacks, because they’re have no security built-in. Author says that most of such computers have no antivirus installed (but how many notebooks or PCs have?) or users are simply turning them off (antivirus apps), because netbooks have too low performance to handle normal apps and antivirus at the same time (what a bullshit). Of course there is Symantec mentioned (commercial?), and I can agree that most of netbooks would not handle Symantec heavy security package. But even my Core 2 Duo regular laptop with 2GB of RAM had problems with Symantec. And it looks like Symantec knew well about the problem, because they’ve returned me money spent on Norton 360 without even asking why. But please, there are better security apps than Symantec and they don’t need such powerful hardware. Second thing if somebody is so stupid to turn off his firewall and antivirus, well, he deserves what he would get.