And as for support for ForeFront, support for a bug with the software is free for both phone and email if you have SA (maintenance). General technical support is also free via email with SA. Tim
From: Tim Vander Kooi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 1:50 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? The comparison of cars and products had nothing to do with support actually. At least not when I made it. ;-) From: RAY ZORZ [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 1:42 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? But you were comparing support to cars. I believe Mike's pointing out below is he's paying MS for support, and also paying them to protect the software from primarily problems with their own software. Our MS support contract gives up unlimited e-mail support, but not unlimited phone support. So it obviously depends on the support agreement. >>> Tim Vander Kooi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7/3/2008 11:04 AM >>> Phone support is free if you purchase support, the same as with any other software company. If you have an AV company that gives free support for the life of the product with no maintenance fees you should definitely share as I’m sure many of us would love to know about it. I don’t know of any myself. TVK From: RAY ZORZ [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? PSS is free? It's one thing to buy an extended warranty, but I expect my car to come with at least some kind of bumper to bumper warranty. >>> Tim Vander Kooi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7/3/2008 9:24 AM >>> That’s what PSS is for. Either them or Rod Trent. :-P From: RAY ZORZ [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 11:16 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? I also expect my new car to come with a warranty so I'm not paying to fix shoddy workmanship. >>> Tim Vander Kooi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7/3/2008 7:40 AM >>> Mike, So if you buy a Chevy and a part goes bad do you refuse to take it to a dealer to have it serviced putting all your trust in only local small shops with hit-and-miss quality and reliability? That’s the same argument that you just made regarding anti-malware, since it is obviously in the manufacturer’s best interest to make a shoddy product so you have to get it serviced more often. The same argument can be made for any other product ever created, and yet quality as a whole in our world continues to improve as opposed to degrading. My personal approach is to buy the best product available for the solution I am in need of. I used to be a huge fan of Eset and NOD32 (I believe I actually got a number of people on the list to start using it), but I believe that their product quality took a hit when they went from v2.x to v3.x (I had been using it since v1.35 or so). I still think that Eset makes a good product also, but in my opinion it is no longer as good as ForeFront IMHO. And if you have ever dealt with Microsoft before then you know that the left hand definitely has no idea what the right hand is doing, you’re lucky if people in the same product group are all on the same page. TVK From: Mike Gill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 7:46 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? It’s weird for me to think about paying MS for software to cover the insecurities in their own software. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that Client Security could catch more problems than maybe everyone, as they would know best how to attack the issue for obvious reasons. This also makes a case for why they would be the best choice. But to need the software there must be problems to justify the solution, so for Forefront Client Security to be successful, it’s in Client Security’s best interest that the client isn’t secure. It’s not a big deal when one guy fixes another guys problem, but when you’re paying one guy to fix his own problems, I guess you better trust that one guy. And stay away from BitDefender. Their new v3 enterprise solution is just not thought through. I don’t know what they were thinking and all the acknowledged bugs I’m finding are show stoppers and killing me. -- Mike Gill From: Tim Vander Kooi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 4:28 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Your fav AV? I just went through removing NOD32 and installing Microsoft’s ForeFront Client Security product and I am thrilled. FF does deployment via AD integrated policies allowing for all machines to be covered with no manual installation required. It has anti-virus and anti-spyware capabilities (it found, and removed, a fairly large amount of spyware that NOD had not picked up), but it also does “Security State” checks where it looks at the overall security “stance” of your computers. i.e. – It will inform you of machines with blank admin passwords, passwords without expirations set, admin groups with “too many” members, Windows security updates missing, and a lot of other things. These security checks give you a view into your overall security situation that I have not seen provided by other products yet. Great product IMO, Tim ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
