I can't help you with Open Source AV. I'm not even convinced that the OS model is appropriate for AV (consider the volume of updates and code changes required, and the time sensitivity of same) I can give you some feedback on CA. We switched from McAfee to InoculateIT Personal Edition on the desktop 2 years ago. Last month, with the withdrawal of IPE, we switched to InoculateIT 6.0 Client. We implemented InoculateIT 6.0 Advanced at the server level last year. I have no quibbles with the product itself. It works, period. The 6.0 client is probably more robust and boasts more features than we will ever use. There is a price to be paid for that in resource footprint, however (about 23MB under Windows 2000 Pro, I believe) The product on the server is equally robust and reliable (Netware, NT, and 2000 Server environments) What weaknesses exist are in support and documentation. There is a tremendous amount of the latter item, but it is scattered between pdf and html files on media, and the web site(s) I'm certain that most of the answers are there somewhere, but finding them can be a chore. CA's web sites in general tend to be poorly organized. CA went to paid incident support for all products a few months ago. This took me by surprise, and I did not purchase the support option with our latest clients. You can still wheedle free phone support on the installation and registration processes, but on the product itself, the only free option remaining is e-mail, with a typical response of 24 - 36 hours. The quality is, to be charitable, shaky. Also, InoculateIT is purchased with fixed period upgrade privileges. So in effect, you will be repurchasing the product periodically (2 years is probably typical). Generally there are pretty attractive competitive upgrade offers from CA. I'm sure that all of the AV vendors have been caught in the same margin squeeze of late, and have found some creative way to pass more costs on to the customer. I recommend InoculateIT on the basis of performance, but suggest that you evaluate the TCO for all of the major AV products before making a decision.
Scott A. Miller Mgr IS Support Unimin Corporation -My opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Unimin Corporation, and I have the battle scars to prove it:) >Lately, I have become very disenchanted with NAS, and am seeking an >alternative to McAffee for virus detection on the Windows platform. > >To that end, I would love to hear about any options you all may know see out >there. I am considering InoculateIT, but I was really hoping to find >something Open Source. Is there anything out there? I did scan Google, but >did not get a match. > >Thanks ahead of time. > >Dean
