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Antivirus Programs: There's more than just Norton

If I say "antivirus", chances are pretty good that you'll think "Norton" -- and that's just fine with the folks at Symantec. With few exceptions, I've had Norton Antivirus on my computers for most of the last 10 years. Symantec makes a good product, backs it up with constantly revised definitions, and provides a lot of useful information on the company's website.

But for the past month I've been trying other antivirus programs and I think I'll keep them.

Why not Norton Antivirus?

One problem with Norton Antivirus products involves installing, upgrading, and removing. Sometimes (in my experience "often" would be a better word) attempts to change the way Norton Antivirus works leads, sooner or later, to formatting the disk drive and reinstalling the operating system.

Another problem is the amount of system resources that Norton Antivirus uses.

And then there are the packages. Should I buy Norton Utilities, Norton Internet Security, or just Norton Antivirus? If I buy the "utilities" product, should I let the other applications run all the time or just start them when I need them?

Changing or deleting: BIG PROBLEM

1. I recently needed to add Norton Utilities to an existing installation of Norton Antivirus. The installation appeared to go all right until I rebooted the system. The antivirus product wouldn't start. I tried to install it again, but the installer told me it was already there. So I tried to uninstall it, but the uninstaller told me it wasn't there.
   
   I deleted all of the Norton directories and Registry entries, but was never able to get the application to run properly until I formatted the drive, reinstalled the operating system, and ran the full Norton Utilities installation again.
   
2. A previous version of Norton Antivirus acted as a proxy server to process inbound and outbound mail. The installation was automatic for some e-mail programs (not mine), so I had to set up the e-mail program to look at pop3.norton.antivirus (or something like that) and then configure the account settings so that Norton would pass along the user ID and the password to the mail server.
   
   Since I understood what was happening, the setup was easy. A user who didn't know what a proxy server was could have been left out in the cold.
   
   Then, when a new version of the program came out, Symantec had eliminated the proxy server. This wasn't mentioned prominently during installation, though. As soon as the program was on the computer, I could no longer receive mail.
   
   Figuring out what had happened took only a minute or so and fixing the problem was quick and easy, but only because I suspected the cause and knew what to do to fix it.
   
3. In testing other antivirus programs, I've removed Norton Antivirus from each test machine. In one case, removing Norton Antivirus eliminated all network access. This might have been a problem that I could have fixed, but I'd been planning to format the drive and reinstall the operating system anyway, so that was my solution.

System resources

If you have Norton Utilities, the program may have suggested running the Disk Doctor or System Doctor at all times. These are enormously resource-hungry programs. There is no reason to run these applications as a matter of course and recent versions of Utilities have defaulted to not running them.

But even Norton Antivirus seems to make the machine a bit sluggish. It is, after all, watching any application that tries to write anything to any disk drive.

The dizzying variety

I've never been able to figure out whether Symantec offers so many packages to be helpful or to boost the company's bottom line. Norton Antivirus is in most of the applications and that's the one that everybody needs; the other products may or may not have value for you.

Whether you need the full utilities program or the Internet security applications is up to you.

Despite the shortcomings, Norton Antivirus is probably still the easiest product to use and the one most people have. For more information, see http://www.symantec.com/nav/nav_9xnt/.

The competition

When I started looking around, I found that there are several competing products, and one of the is completely free.

McAfee

The best known competing product is from McAfee. This is a product I haven't used recently, but previous versions have always been competent in terms of catching and eliminating infected files. The McAfee product has generally been a little harder to install, though.

In McAfee's favor is SpamKiller, Thor Ivar's utility that seeks out spam and eliminates it. SpamKiller is now owned by McAfee and that gives the company a program that could open doors for its other applications.

For details, see http://www.mcafee.com/ for information about McAfee's on-line services and about traditional applications that run on your PC.

AVG Antivirus

If you're on a limited budget and you don't mind getting an excellent product for free, take a look at AVG Antivirus from Grisoft (Czech Republic). You can pay for the product if you'd like a somewhat more robust interface, but the free version is surprisingly capable. It includes automatic virus definition updates and can, at your option, add a notice about the message being "certified" virus free. The message may be switched on for inbound or outbound mail, either all messages or only those with attachments.

The "certification" is perhaps a bit over the top because it depends on Grisoft always being ahead of virus writers and it depends on your having the latest definitions (you can turn off the automatic update feature).

AVG Antivirus is a breeze to install. This is an application that anybody could install without instructions. Even if you're running the free version, you do need a serial number. You get that by going to the Grisoft website.

The paid version costs $40 for a single-user license. For corporate use, a multi-license option reduces the price (depending on quantity of licenses purchased) to $32 (starting with 2 licenses) or to $11 (for 100 licenses) with several intermediate prices.

	The free version and the paid version of the AVG control panel are similar, but the paid version offers additional flexibility. (This is the free version.)
	The scanner component of AVG Antivirus is robust and offers all the standard options. The paid version (this is the free version) offers additional capabilities.

Volume users should also consider protecting their servers with AVG Server. The price is as low as $38 if your network has just 2 users and as high as $648 if your network has 100 users.

For more information, see http://www.grisoft.com/.

NOD32

Also worth a look is another Czech Republic antivirus program NOD32, which sells for $40 (annual $27 renewals) or $30 for volume users. NOD32 is distributed in the US by Eset in California.

NOD32 is not an antivirus program for the timid. It must be installed as a proxy server. This is not particularly difficult if you have a single e-mail account. If you retrieve mail from numerous servers, though, the setup can be time consuming.

In my case, it was even more complicated.

To retrieve mail from the office, I have to run an application that establishes a secure connection and then performs "port forwarding" for POP3 and SMTP ports. To send or retrieve mail, my e-mail program connects to "localhost" (127.0.0.1), which forwards to port 21 (POP3) or port 110 (SMTP) at the office.

NOD32 would like to be localhost, too, but that's not possible. The help files explain how to get around this problem: For each e-mail system you need to communicate with, you need to create an entry in the POP3 scanner component of the software. For a single account, this is easy: You tell the scanner the address of your POP3 server (mail.foobar.com, for example) and tell it to listen on the POP3 port (110).

Those with multiple servers need to create multiple entries in the POP3 scanner. Each e-mail account gets a separate address. For example, the scanner communicates mail.foobar.com on port 110, but "listens" for your e-mail program on port 11010 of localhost (127.0.0.1). It communicates with mail.evileye.com on port 110, but "listens" for your e-mail program on port 11011 of localhost. The only difference is the port number (you assign the number -- most values from 10500 and up are available).

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

For my office mail system, I had to set up the POP3 scanner to listen on a "high" port, but then to communicate with "localhost", which communicated with the port-forwarding security software, which then communicated with mail.atmyoffice.com. This sounds a lot more complicated than it is -- it's really a lot like the old "bucket brigade" fire companies -- and if you think of it that way, it's not at all confusing. But if "port addresses" and "IP addresses" and "port forwarding" frighten you, this may not be the right choice.

What I've found with NOD32 on one computer, the free version of AVG Antivirus on another computer, and the paid version of AVG Antivirus on a third computer is this: The computers boot faster and work better than when they had Norton Antivirus installed. Each of the computer has received numerous infected messages, but none of the messages got through to cause any harm.

The controls for the various components (three panels with various settings) look complex, and they are more involved than those for most other products; but the complexity provides for more flexibility.

For more information, see http://www.eset.com/.

WARNING: Pick ONE

A peculiar American philosophy seems to hold that more is better:

• $1000 is good, so $2000 is better.
• The recommended dose is 2 aspirin, so 3 will work better or faster.
• One antivirus program is good, so 2 will be even better.

While $2000 is undoubtedly better than $1000 and there might be instances in which 3 aspirin tablets are better than 2, beware installing multiple antivirus programs! In most cases, multiple antivirus applications get in each other's way; you won't get enhanced protection and you may get no protection at all.

The best solution is to pick an antivirus program that you have confidence in, follow the installation instructions, update the definitions regularly, and even then don't open an attachment if it comes from somebody you don't know or if it's and unexpected or unusual message from somebody you do know.

Safe is always better than sorry.

Ventura Publisher leads, but follows

At first glance, Corel Ventura 10.0 doesn't look much different from Ventura Publisher version 8, but the differences are there. Subtle, perhaps, but present. Corel now sees this application as key to its "Deep White" strategy, but marketing is still well behind the curve.

When you think of publishing software, you probably think of Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign because these applications run on the Mac and "everyone knows" the Mac is the right machine for publishing. If the Mac is the only computer capable of setting type electronically, I've been using the wrong computer since 1982. The Mac is certainly a good choice for publishing, but a Windows PC is an equally good choice -- perhaps a better choice because Corel Ventura is a Windows application, not a Mac application.

But that's an argument for the operating system evangelists.

One big change between Ventura 8 and Ventura 10 is that the new version runs only on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Windows 9x machines need not apply. Nor Windows Me machines. If you want to use a real publishing system, you have to use a real operating system and -- when it comes to Windows -- the only ones that fit the description are Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Ventura guru Rick Altman was vehement about the change. When Corel announced that Corel Ventura 10 would run only on Windows XP or Windows 2000, Rick called it a terrible mistake. As a beta tester, he was forced to upgrade (he chose XP) and suddenly reversed course: If the price of stability and predictability is an operating system upgrade, he said, make the change.

Those of us who had been using Windows 2000 since its release date and who had upgraded to Windows XP already knew about the improved stability it provided for most applications. If you haven't yet upgraded to one of the "real" operating systems, you should.

Stability -- that's all?

Well, that's a lot. Stability isn't a sexy new feature, but it certainly feels good to open a publication, make changes, and print it without a crash. For all its power and all its flexibility, Ventura 8 had some notable crash problems. Those who used the program on a regular basis knew where the land mines were and avoided them, but new users could spend days trying to do something the program was just not capable of doing -- a global search and replace across multiple chapters, for example -- thinking that they were doing something wrong. It was a known bug.

So the long-awaited Ventura 10 arrives with lots of old bugs removed and a few new features, most of which operate as advertised.

Tagging has always been one of Ventura's best and most powerful features. In the beginning, paragraph tags differentiated the program from others. Being able to apply attributes on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis was a big deal in the mid 1980s. Eventually, programs such as Pagemaker began to provide paragraph styles. By then Ventura had added character styles, frame styles, and page styles. These were later joined by rule styles and now by table styles. The point with each of these it to establish repeatable design specifications that can be applied across an entire publication and, should the style change two days before the press deadline, to make it possible to change settings across an entire publication by changing just a single style.

One of Ventura 8's biggest handicaps was its dated file import capabilities. Version 10 brings with it the ability to import a wide range of file formats, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Micrografx Designer, iGrafx Designer, Corel Designer, and Corel Photo-Paint.

Creating output as PDF is easier, too, with the new Publish to PDF functionality. This isn't the wimpy (and largely useless) PDF Writer, but a genuine Adobe PDF distiller built in to Corel Ventura. Users can add crop marks, calibration bars, densitometer scales, and registration marks. There's also support for embedding any type of file, complete with author, keyword information, and ICC profiles, into the exported PDF.

If you're an XML wizard, you'll be delighted to know that Corel Ventura allows you to import XML files, you can easily publish XML content to create professional business documents. No XML export is available, though, which has been a disappointment to some. And text I/O is still less than perfect.

Included in the Ventura 10 box (in addition to Ventura) are Corel DataBase Publisher, Corel Capture 10, Corel Barcode Wizard, XML Mapping Editor, Color User Guide, and more than 1500 typefaces in both TrueType and Type 1 formats.

The weakest link

The most significant shortcoming in Corel Ventura 10 is the same thing that has plagued Ventura 8, Ventura 7, Ventura 5, and earlier versions (when the product was owned by Xerox): Limited marketing support.

Corel has only recently realized that it is unique in having applications that cover every aspect of publishing:

• WordPerfect for document creation.
• Corel Draw for vector art and ad creation.
• Corel PhotoPaint for photo editing.
• Corel Capture for screen captures.
• Corel Database Publisher for catalog projects.
• Corel Ventura for newsletters, magazines, and books.

No other company has products for every step of the publishing process. Nobody. Period. Ventura isn't available on the Mac, but it can create Postscript and PDF output that Macs are more than happy to consume.

If you're a Ventura 8 user, you should buy the upgrade. If you're using some other publishing program on the PC (Adobe InDesign or Quark Xpress), taking a look at what Ventura can offer you would be a good way to spend a day or two.

For Mac users, the equation is a bit more complex. The most popular publishing program on the Mac (Quark Xpress) isn't yet available as a native OS X application. Neither is Ventura and it won't be. So if you want the very latest publishing technology, maybe it's time to look at a Windows computer. And at Corel Ventura.

New users will pay $700 for the package and those who are upgrading will pay $250. Those who are upgrading must have Ventura 7 or Ventura 8 installed or have the original installation CD available.

For more information, see the Corel Ventura website.

Good idea, bad government

"Kids need a safe place to go on the Internet," said North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan, when he introduced a bill that would create a government-monitored "safe haven" for kids on the Internet.

Within a year, a new domain (.kids.us) is supposed to be available. A "government contractor" will monitor all sites on the domain to ensure the material is appropriate for children under 13. The bill won unanimous approval from both the House and the Senate this week. President Bush is expected to sign it.

Those who want to register websites in the "dot-kids" area within the United States Internet domain would have to agree to display only child-friendly material. The sites would be prohibited from linking to Internet sites outside the kids area. Instant messaging or chat rooms also would be banned unless they are certified as safe.

But who decides?

The legislation defines Web content as harmful to children if it depicts sex or nudity (art galleries would presumably not be allowed to set up virtual museums unless they made sure all subjects of paintings and sculptures were clothed), if it is clearly sexual in nature, or if it lacks "serious, literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors."

What is serious and artistic to one person might be profane to another. I certainly wouldn't want to be the government contractor in charge of this mess.

Congress NeuStar Incorporated to be the monitor. NeuStar has managed the ".us" domain for a year and has another three years in its contract. The company's contract would be extended by 2 years if it agrees to manage the children's domain.

Piled on top of NeuStar will be the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Bureaucrats there will monitor the domain and remove anything it finds objectionable. This might cause you to wonder who's really in charge -- NeuStar of NTIA. There would, of course, be procedures for website operators to contest decisions to remove their content.

It's hard to imagine any plan with better intentions or any plan that has less hope of success.

Nerdly News

Surly customers grumble about Microsoft

Well, nothing new there. People are always willing to grumble about Microsoft, even when the company does the right thing.

Microsoft is telling Microsoft Office 11 beta testers that the product will work only on Windows 2000 (SP3) or Windows XP. Not on Windows Me. Not on Windows 98. Certainly not on Windows 95.

The assumption is that Microsoft is just trying to force customers to upgrade to a new version of the operating system. But Microsoft isn't the first company to require W2K or WXP. Corel Ventura Publisher, released a few weeks ago, does not run on Windows Me. Or Windows 9x. Ventura Publisher runs only on W2K and WXP. Why? The answer is a single word: stability.

Can Microsoft play the "stability" card with an application as "simple" and "basic" as a word processor? I think they can because Word is neither "simple" nor "basic". Neither is Excel. And Approach is a programmable relational database application. So it's likely that Microsoft will be able to create a better and more stable program by eliminating support for operating systems such as Windows 9x and Windows Me. This has certainly been the case for Ventura Publisher.

But that means that more than half of the computers with Windows won't be able to use Office 11 when it's released next year. Some industry estimates suggest that 60% of Windows computers are still running Windows 9x or Windows Me. But how many of those computers will be retired between now and the time the next version of office ships? Anyone who buys a new computer will get Windows XP.

It's probable that anyone who's satisfied with the way Windows 95 works is still running Office 95. These folks aren't likely to suddenly decide to go out and buy the latest version of Office anyway.

Linux keeps chewing on the corners of computing

IBM says it will work with Sharp to develop a handheld computer that runs the open source software. Sharp already has a Linux-based palm-top. The latest version of the Zaurus, which went on sale earlier this year, runs on Linux. The Zaurus has received only luke-warm reviews and hasn't caught on with consumers. The palm-top market is dominated by devices that operating systems from Palm and Microsoft.

IBM says its Linux-powered handheld, aimed at corporate clients, will be go on sale in mid 2003.

In the early days of computing, IBM championed proprietary hardware and proprietary software, but now the company is one of the biggest supporters of open-source Linux, which anyone can freely use and modify. While mostly used in Web servers and corporate systems today, Microsoft sees Linux as a substantial threat.

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