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  • Re: Norton Utilities 8

    From usenet@usenet@gp.users.panix.com (Greg Pratt) to comp.sys.mac.system on Thursday, July 24, 2003 17:06:57
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <user-3C1C49.10282910072003@scream.auckland.ac.nz>,
    Peter KERR <user@host.domain> wrote:
    There's some material on versiontracker.com that would be regarded as >libelous in some jurisdictions...

    I've always thought of Nortons as like ResEdit or a sharp knife,
    you can fix amazing things on your system, or you can destroy it.
    IOW, Keep away from Children

    So, any adults out there got anything useful to say about NU8?
    (DiskWarrior groupies ineligible ;-)

    I think there are two separate points here. First, you're right -- small children and similarly intellectual adults ought not to be playing with matches.

    That agreement notwithstanding, there is disillusionment and outright
    disgust with how Symantec has developed Norton Utilities for Macintosh.
    I would argue that they've been going slowly downhill since around version
    5.0. Even if you disagree with that assessment, I think you'll have to
    concede that their Mac OS X version(s) are pure crap. The design of the programs shows that they don't get it, and really missed the boat.

    The death knell for my faith in them came when I saw the OS X-native
    version of Norton Disk Doctor instruct me to stop using my
    applications, mouse, and keyboard while NUM waited for the system to
    become as quiescent as possible, so that any corrections it made to my
    disk would be relatively safe. That's an incredibly irresponsible
    assumption for a disk utility, and I felt it was playing Russian Roulette
    with my hard drive. That was the end of NUM on my system.

    Well, *almost* the end. Removing it was trickier than expected, because
    the product had installed some kernel extensions that I had to chase
    after... things that made my system crash without the rest of NUM
    installed.

    Sorry for the rant, but I've just had enough of that software flotsam.

    --
    Gregory Pratt usenet@gp.users.panix.com
    East Rutherford, NJ, USA
    PGP Key Fingerprint: DC60 FCDE 91E2 3D41 91A3 45DB B474 3D3A 3621 AAFE
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  • From justin@justin.c@se.net to comp.sys.mac.system on Friday, July 25, 2003 00:01:50
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <bfphph$q3$1@panix5.panix.com>, Greg Pratt <usenet@gp.users.panix.com> wrote:

    In article <user-3C1C49.10282910072003@scream.auckland.ac.nz>,
    Peter KERR <user@host.domain> wrote:


    concede that their Mac OS X version(s) are pure crap. The design of the programs shows that they don't get it, and really missed the boat.

    The death knell for my faith in them came when I saw the OS X-native
    version of Norton Disk Doctor instruct me to stop using my
    applications, mouse, and keyboard while NUM waited for the system to
    become as quiescent as possible, so that any corrections it made to my
    disk would be relatively safe. That's an incredibly irresponsible
    assumption for a disk utility, and I felt it was playing Russian Roulette with my hard drive. That was the end of NUM on my system.


    *You* are making an " incredibly irresponsible assumption" - EVERY
    single disk utility without exemption will stop all processes while
    executing, for obvious reasons. It may not be obvious to you but an
    active process constantly reads/writes to the drive changing its
    parameters. You should boot from Norton CD, not because it makes it
    "safe" rather - to enable it to do the job properly. That's why the CD
    includes bootable OS.

    j.
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