Hello from New Haven and a MAC question

Latest post 06-30-2009 12:05 PM by cristam44. 2 replies.

Hello from New Haven and a MAC question

06-23-2009 1:33 PM

I am Associate Director at Gesell Institute, an educational non-profit in New Haven, CT. I have what I feel like may be a stupid question, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere on-line, so here goes: 

Does anyone know whether Norton 360 works on a Mac? I have a MacBook Pro with OS X. 

Thanks!!

 

Re: Hello from New Haven and a MAC question

06-25-2009 10:47 AM

Hello from Hartford, Crista!  No, Norton 360 does not work on Mac OS X (or any Mac OS).  Are you looking for software to protect your Mac?  There are some antivirus products for the Mac that I am aware of.  I personally wouldn't bother with antivirus on the Mac - just behave nicely.  But there are some that would disagree.

  • Norton Internet Security 3.0 for Mac - here on TechSoup - the closes to Norton 360 you can find for the Mac from Symantec.  You just need to decide between single user, 10-user, 25-user, etc.
  • ClamXav - free, based on the open source clam av project.  This is the one I would recommend, though it doesn't offer "resident, real tiem protection" - this just means you have to manually scan files before opening them.  Or schedule scans on your hard disk.

I would avoid the Norton line of products from Symantec if at all possible.  I've had very bad experiences with them.  They are making a lot of my Windows users' machines essentially inoperable.  The Symantec corporate line of products is pretty good, but they don't support Mac (Windows, Netware, Linux only).  So, you could get Norton Internet Security for your Mac, but I'd recommend against it.  Are you experiencing any difficulty with it now, or are you just trying to be a safe, good computer user?  [ Here's a site that lists some security tips on the Mac OS ] that, though about 3 years old, still applies today I think.  With some best practices and good computer behavior, you should be pretty safe.

Re: Hello from New Haven and a MAC question

06-30-2009 12:05 PM

Thank you Chris! 

I kind of figured that was the case based on how little information I could find on Norton 360 for a Mac...I did end up just renewing the basic Norton for Mac software I had since the subscription was running out. I couldn't get it through TechSoup since our type of non-profit did not qualify for Norton purchases, or something like that.

I did also find info on the ClamXav app when researching my options, but decided against it for now since I didn't know enough about it. May go with that next year though, thanks. I am essentially just trying to be a safe, good computer user, as you said, and protect my Mac since I would be lost if it did get attacked by a virus, even though I do understand that Macs rarely do...sort of a better safe than sorry perspective I suppose. 

The other piece I really wanted was backup, since that's even more important to me and my design files and such are making it nearly impossible to do manual backups on flash drives as I had been doing. I found Mozy through a post or article on here, though, and am very happy with it so far, though it does take a long time to run the backup. 

Again, thanks!