It is again achougoo’s review, which prompted me to post this review. Otherwise my plan was to post reviews only in April (preferably from April 1st!) as I am up to my neck this month with all kinds of commitments. For this reason alone, I will not take much time to prepare this review, and it should be seen more as extempore than well thought out.
The old, pestiferous, virus days
I remember the days when some others and I in my office used to keep the computer room free from viruses (I was then Chairperson of one of the now fashionable committees in academic institutions [which, I admit from experience, are more of nuisance value!], and so I had to lead the team from the Front (quite unlike the BJP which is leading the nation from the back of Ashok Singhal in the Ayodhya apocalypse with the Centre depending on the nation’s last-minute Rescue Disk, namely the Supreme Court!).
We used to get all floppies of all the computer users (then supposedly to be stored in the computer room) and check one by one for anti-virus vaccine treatment (not like our politicians polio-vaccine politics and its hype and hoopla!). When I look back I get the happy feeling that whatever we did was in the last century (yes, in a real sense also!); for, technology has advanced so much.
Norton AntiVirus 2001
And that takes me to the subject of achougoo’s review. I have been having Norton AntiVirus ever since I bought a PC at home. I did not dabble into the techniques of installation, screening, etc. The dealer does all that. Since I do not use floppies of others, the likelihood of any virus entering my PC through floppies is remote. The Virus route to my PC is, as in most other cases, the Internet. In any case, so far, that is, for about 18 months my PC has been free from the virus menace.
Till recently I had only Norton AntiVirus 2001. In some sense Norton is out and out anti-virus, and is the FBI and Pentagon rolled into one, of course, with only Bills and Gates as its guards and not any Bushes and Hedges!
I got this impression from a simple instance. Whenever I inserted my old floppies (on which I have material from my earlier PCs), Norton gave me the alarm signal “virus”. Once I responded to the prompt the floppy is “repaired”, and I am allowed to proceed with my work. In all probability there might not have been any virus on the floppies. But Norton is being over-cautious, and does not want any terrorists anywhere near my PC.
Norton AntiVirus 2002
Recently I had Norton 2002 installed. I have not made any comparison of this with the earlier version. But I think it is an improvement over the earlier one.
The new version has on top (1) Live-update, Rescue Disk, Options, and Help; immediately below these (2) System Status; below that (3) Auto-protection, E-mail Scanning, Script Blocking, Full System Scan; followed by (4) Virus Definitions, Subscription, and Automatic Live-Update.
Improvement
I think the last is an addition to the 2002 version. The e-mail filtering of Norton 2002 is also advanced. It filters both incoming and outgoing e-mails, and one can see the Anti-Virus in action.
While a Full-System Scan may take a long time, particularly when a PC has thousands of files and folders (as in my case!), once the Auto-Protection is ON (enabled), and once the Automatic Live-update is activated, I do not see any need for periodic Full-System Scan.
The Rescue Disk, as achougoo mentioned, is Basic Rescue. I have not used this so far, mainly because of my laziness. For Basic Rescue uses floppy disks (six in all) to boot the system into DOS.
Since I get all my e-mails through the Outlook Express, I have noticed that Norton dare not interfere with e-mails from hotmail.com. The reason should be obvious.
On the whole I am happy that I am free from viruses at least in my PC, thanks to Norton, if not from my body, and from the body polity of my nation.