Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Take two & call me in the morning...

Norton Anti-Virus has to be about the worst anti-virus program out there. And I say that not because it doesn't do its primary job, which is to protect your PC from malware; just in the way it goes about it.

Not content to protect your PC against viruses and other malware, it also takes over your recycle bin (in case you want to undelete something), your network access (in case something tries to connect that shouldn't), and your operating system (in case something tries to install that shouldn't). Not taking into account these are things that happen normally all the time, in the name of protecting you this software presents you with warning box after warning box of things you can't do anything about or are unsure that you want to do anything about.

And by dire warnings from other product that do similar things, a user is duped into installing even more software. Take my poor cousin Red, for example: between the protection offered by Windows and layered products of Norton, AOL, and virus scan package by her ISP her entire PC is now in a paroxysm of conflicting indecision. Practically schizophrenic with all these things in its poor computer brain trying to protect it, it displays lots of confusing warnings but accomplishes nothing.

My solution to the whole mess? I bought a Mac.

- Farmer Ted

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