December 10 - December 17

Introducing SystemWorks by Alessandro Cancian David Loomstein, Symantec Group Product Manager for Mac, told me during a phone interview that their new products would be available before the name of the next U.S. President was known. Kidding aside, this years big news for Symantec is the fact that there is news at all. The Mac world always was an easily conquered terrain for the Santa Monica-based company, but the updates of the various Norton Utilities suites had brought nothing worth noticing in Appleland. Symantec recently released the latest version of its leading products, Norton Utilities (NU $149.95), now in its sixth edition, and Norton Antivirus (NA $104.95) 7.0. The graphic interface of the new releases did not change much from previous editions, but even though the external appearance is the same, there are surprises under the hood. Loomstein has introduced some new features for NU, probably the best-known disk repair, data recovery, and drive optimization software. "We are really excited about it, we improved the directory scan/rebuild and that will be a positive feature for customers trying to recover data and directories from scratch. Also, we now offer the opportunity to customize the Speed Disk optimization profile, so you can decide if you want files in specific places or a specific order, depending on how the customers use the machine." Version 6 also offers the ability to update the product via the Internet with LiveUpdate and the option to rebuild the desktop, a feature requested by many users. Fact is, the PC version still offers something more than its Mac counterpart. But Loomstein, even if he couldnt reveal anything specific, remarked that "Symantec in general is moving in the direction of having products in parity with all the Mac platforms and the Windows platforms. I can tell you that were working on some improvements, but you have to consider that you have some issues on the Mac that you dont have on the Windows side and it takes a little more time to do compatibility because there are so many new versions of the operating systems coming out all the time." Will the introduction of Mac OS X change all this? Loomstein is very clear: "Its going to make it even harder, but I dont think it will come out as often. Well see. But I think the introduction of the new system is a new challenge and the product looks really great. Were working closely with Apple to make sure that our products are ready for the new OS." Right now NU is already OSX beta compatible (HFS+ only) when launched from Mac OS 9 and also supports the system from version 8.1 up. The Antivirus version, version 7.0, will automatically scan e-mail attachments, Auto-protect scans for viruses and can perform repairs as needed. A pleasant surprise comes from a simplification of preferences, a new feature allowing users to set protection levels to zero, minimal, standard or full, eliminating the need to configure each setting individually. The NA is also Mac OS X beta compatible if running from OS 9. The two software suites are available together in the SystemWorks version ($194.95) that also includes Aladdin Spring Cleaning (a cleaning utility) and Danz Retrospect (Backup software). The best news comes, however, from the introduction of two new software packages, Personal FireWall 1.0 (NPF) and Norton Internet Security (NIS). NPF ($104.95) is an easy-to-use Internet security solution that protects computers connected to the net from hacking and privacy intrusions, a must have for people on DSL or Cable connections. Users can also configure which applications are allowed to access the Internet and are notified when an unauthorized program, such as a Trojan horse, tries to send information from the computer. The NIS ($149.95) is a suite that combines NPF and NA in a single suite. By press time, I had the opportunity to review only the SystemWorks suite and I believe Loomstein was justly excited about the new products. A complete recovery of lost data offered markedly better results than those achieved by previous versions, and this would be enough to justify the cost of an update. Waiting for new features to be introduced and that products such as NIS approach more closely their PC equivalents, e.g. parental control for Internet access, we still do not know who the President of the United States is: in this, Loomstein was perfectly right. For further information, please visit www.symantec.com

 

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