Peter's Blog

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.

Why companies are killing trial version? It’s so good method to sell the product.

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.

Another thing. He writes about corporate users that they would not want it as it’s non secure. Well, I’m able to find better reasons why corporate users don’t want it than low security. And I believe normal admin would not let such hardware to his network without proper security, same as with notebooks or regular PCs. I really don’t understand what he is talking about, same as these “experts”. My company’s Dell when I’ve unpacked it hasn’t got any antivirus software as well and it was far more expensive piece of hardware than mentioned by author 300$. And again old phrase, netbook is bad because it can’t handle software which is able to protect data from being stolen. Wow, it really looks that you need to have very powerful piece of hardware to be able to secure your data. What a crap.

OK, let’s calm down a little. At the end of this text there is mentioned that maybe it’s not so bad, because in most cases there is nothing to steal from personal computers. Well how would you know. They’re saying me that typical teenager who is using facebook has no interesting and valuable data on his hard drive? They’ve just ruined my world. According to comments under this text there is not only me angry about it. Still I think that it’s some kind of joke from Wired, to show us how some people could think. How some “experts” are not worth a penny. At least I want to believe that.

Uff. Long time there was no such long text of mine. I hope that in spite that I’m a little mad right now, it’s still understandable. And don’t worry, I’m still Wired fan, and would extend my subscription:)