“I long ago gave up on Symantec / Norton. I run freeware / shareware programs on my systems which replace Symantec’s stuff. Their pricing options are insane – even for a ‘minor’ version upgrade, you have to pay a large fee. You have to pay for subscriptions to keep running your firewall, even. What’s up with that? Obviously, Symantec’s way of saying: ‘We’ll simply annoy you *every single year* until you buy the latest product.’ I’m not the only one to think this. Their tech support has been atrocious.

“Middle of last year, I tried to actually subscribe for the antivirus updates on someone else’s machine for them. After almost three hours of cycling through their site (thanks to LiveUpdate not knowing what to do – note that some of this time was spent trying to find an actual tech support email address), I finally was able to squeeze out a support email. The response to my troubles was a list of options. First, reboot and try again. Second, re-install and try again. Hah! Third, try this ‘partner site.’ Fourth, phone in the order. Anyone else notice how long it took them to get online purchasing of their subscription content? What, they don’t trust their own security products? Fifth, email my credit card information back to the tech support person, so they can conduct the transaction. Anyone else’s eyes rolling here?” [Charles Smith]