Die, Symantec, Die!

I'm going to be off-line for a while this morning.

I'll be eradicating Norton Internet Security 2008 from both my big desktop system and the tablet and installing something else. How do I say it politely? Oh, yeah, that's right, it's me and I don't have to be polite. So I'll phrase it in a manner that will make it a distinctive hit for the search engines:

Norton Internet Security 2008 by Symantec is a complete and total piece of shit. Under no circumstance should you install this bloated, hamstrung resource-sucking, poorly-coded, productivity-killing, over-priced, piece of shit on your computer.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I despise the NIS interface, everything from it's piss-yellow color to the fact that it does not comply with Windows standards for look and feel, and the fact that it is without doubt the least intuitive interface yet fielded by a mainstream software company.

But this isn't about that - this is about the fact the NIS 2008 is a giant sucking chest wound of a resource hog. Based on my own experience, I'd say Symantec has decided that the best way to protect your computer from the internet, is by preventing you from getting online in the first place. It's simple really, if you can't use your computer you can't get any bad internetty stuff in there.

I have broadband cable internet, both my main desktop system and my tablet are high end machines, with plenty of RAM and processing power and high speed connections to the network - and both are hopelessly bogged down by NIS 2008 no matter how I tweak the settings. I might as well be using dialup, NIS 2008 bogs down the systems so badly that internet surfing is painfully slow, page loads and refreshes take forever. The hard drive runs continuously. The system will sit idle for hours, but the minute you load a page in Fireforx, the drive light comes on and stays on. Both systems frequently lock-up or pause for 30-40 seconds while the drive runs continuously and NIS checks the pages. It's absolutely maddening. And it's definitely NIS 2008, both systems began displaying identical symptoms as soon as it was installed, and the processor scanner shows NIS and Symantec processes sucking up to 98% of the system resources almost continuously.

And then there's the rest of it - for some bizarre reason Symantec has seen fit to remove Ad-Block from NIS 2008, which in point of fact continues a trend. Each year, the Norton product line becomes just a little less feature rich - while the prices inch upward. It's bad enough that that the anti-spam, parental controls, and ad-blocking extensions were regulated to an 'add-on' download, instead of being included on the CD or in the online purchase, but Symantec as been slowly whittling down that add-on pack, with obvious intention of getting rid of it altogether - here's the funny part, I buy NIS primarily because of those integrated enhancements. If I'm not going to get them all in one package, well then I'm going to go somewhere else. Hell, I can get decent anti-virus and firewall protection for free - why the hell should I pay Symantec to hamstring my computer? Seriously, deletion of the ad-blocking software is the last straw for me.

Attention Symantec: You've lost a customer. I've bought Norton products since version 1 of Norton Utilities, but no more. Congratulations, you've finally managed to destroy the one of the best products on the market. You may not notice it in your bottom line for a while, as you coast along on Peter Norton's reputation, but sooner or later you'll be sitting in bankruptcy court whining about how Bill Gates put you out of business and it's just so unfair, wah wah wah! We'll call that the Word Perfect business model.

Seriously, Folks, don't buy this product. Don't install it if you have it. Don't upgrade from NIS 2006, or 2007. If you buy a new computer and NIS 2008 comes pre-installed, delete it.

There are plenty of alternatives, many free, use those.

Back in a couple of hours.