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Please understand that I'm not a bloatware fan (Yes! I'll tak a bigger piece of corpulance, please...!) but that in my order of optimizing things, I place correct functionality and security above other things. Just how one determines good functionality isn't so easy though... In the case of your GX1's, they need more memory. I'm upgrading six of my 400MHz systems for grad student use. I've put 768M in them as well as a larger disk, so they'll be as fast as little 400MHz systems can be. The problem of people running multiple items which start interfering with each other isn't so much a bloat issue as management issue. That *is* a problem. I'm really interested in your experiences with other anti virus programs. I'd really like to see a meeting devoted to talking about this. I'm sure I could learn some neat stuff. --STeve Andre' Political Science On Tuesday 01 November 2005 14:17, Steve Bogdanski wrote: > I would have to disagree on this, bloatware can become a big issue for us. > Of our 1,000+ PCs at least 15-20% are 7 year old Dell Optiplex G1s, these > PCs use Celeron 400MHz processors and have only 256MB of SDRAM. While > these PCs are old they do their job quite well (word processing, email, web > browsing, hospital terminals, etc), what makes them still usable is the > ability to keep the base system resource usage to a minimum. > > As for proving which is better I can't do that, but I can offer a large > amount of personal experience with multiple AV platforms. It has > definitely been my experience that systems running Symantec are much more > likely to be infected with virii and/or spyware. It has been a common > occurrence that when we take over support for a user or group, we first > need to clean up their heavily infected systems and then shortly after we > will uninstall Symantec/McAfee/other and install f-prot instead. This will > usually solve the majority of these new users problems and usually they > won't require much assistance from us on this topic afterwards. > > The other problem with bloatware is that many users end up with multiple > programs running that are supposed to handle the same task. I had one user > who had 4 software firewalls installed on his system and he was wondering > why his PC was barely lurching along. Also add to this the list of > security vulnerabilities that are introduced by these all-in-one security > programs from Norton and McAfee. Just take a look over at the Open Source > Vulnerability Database (http://www.osvdb.org) and you will see what I mean. > Each one of these vulnerabilities requires patching the actual A/V > software itself. There have been 4 vulnerabilities in Norton this year so > far. A search for F-Prot or Frisk leads to no entries, heck we have had > some users bring in laptops where the A/V engine hadn't been updated in > years and the system still had the latest definitions and was virus free. > > Spyware is definitely a little more tricky, but we seem to fair pretty well > here. Instead of buying a separate software solution we rely on F-Prot's > ability to catch the more malicious variants and then lock down user's > workstations to prevent the less malicious but more bothersome varieties. > While this solution isn't perfect, it doesn't add any cost and the PCs that > still have problems are quickly cleaned up by one of our techs. > > > ________________________________________________ > Stephen Bogdanski Network Support, MSU-CVM > Michigan State University [log in to unmask] > A227 VetMed Center Phone: (517) 353-5551 > East Lansing, MI 48824 Fax: (517) 432-2937 > > >>> STeve Andre' <[log in to unmask]> 11/01/05 11:57AM >>> > > On Monday 31 October 2005 20:35, Margaret Wilson wrote: > > I won't requote prices since Peter has done an excellent job of that > > already. :-) Unlike many antivirus products (especially Symantec) which > > have turned into what I call "bloatware" using up a ton of RAM, NOD32 has > > a small footprint and is very configurable. It also updates daily, > > sometimes more than once. I second Peter's wish that MSU would negotiate > > reduced rates with Eset. > > > > Regards, > > > > Margaret > > [snip] > > I'm not concerned with "bloatware" (love that term) per se, as something > that works is FAR more important to me than something with a smal > memory footprint. > > As with John Valenti, I've found Symantec to be OK. I can't think of the > last time a user got a virus, so the combination of MSU's email spam/ > virus filter and Symantec seems to be working well. ...But how do I > prove that? I'm not at all against jumping to a different platform but > judging how well they work isn't simple. Spyware detectors are easier > to judge I think, owing to the sheer volume of dreck out there. So far > I think Spysweeper is one of the winners. > > This topic, spyware & virus protection might make for a very lively > interesting NAG meeting. > > --STeve Andre' > Political Science