Part of certain bundles of Systemworks are the onlyĮlements I consider of Norton software for the Mac as still Norton Anti-Virus and Retrospect Express which are both Never though rely on these utilities to save you when you don't have a backup, because a dying hard drive can happen at any time. Then only use these utilities when fixing the directory is faster than recovering from backup. So get a backup plan in place for you and your father. No utility can be trusted 100% as symptoms which would ask you to repair the directory can also mean the hard drive is dying. So I would recommend to get the latter if you have a high speed internet connection. Software can be much more easily compromised by hackers than hardware when it comes to routers. In addition, wireless routers that have WEP or WPA encryption enabled, and wired routers have the ability to manage and block ping attacks to add to your protection. Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing has a built-in firewall you can activate and manage yourself without slowing your system down, which Symantec's package has been known to do. And Anti-Virus has its own difficulty with its auto-protect feature sometimes slowing the system down and getting in the way of installers when it shouldn't.Īnother package they make for the Mac is mostly redundant, and that's Personal Firewall.
The bad history actually began with Mac OS 8.1, and just got worse with Mac OS X even though the software runs under Mac OS X. Speed Disk, Disk Doctor both have a bad history of playing russian roulette with the system's directory, and once damaged they don't repair it properly leaving you with either Alsoft Disk Warrior or Techtools Pro to clean up the mess. Norton Anti-Virus and Retrospect Express which are both part of certain bundles of Systemworks are the only elements I consider of Norton software for the Mac as still worthy of running on Mac OS X. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link. Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post: However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. If one could only purchase one now, I'd recommend they purchase DW4, then later add TTP4 when funds permit.īetter to have the tools and not need them, than to need them and not have them.Ī good mechanic has more than one kind of wrench in their toolbox. But I've seen DW4 save more than one person's bacon and the suite of hardware tests and additional functions TTP4 bring to the table make both a worthwhile investment. Neither utility is a substitute for a comprehensiveīackup and Recovery solution. I've found their upgrades to be reasonably priced for what they do. If one owns neither utility today, the initial investment may seem like a good deal of money, but compared to your data and your time, the cost of these utilities is insignificant in the the long run. TTP4's Surface Scan is also useful in determining if a disk has developed bad sectors. Unless you perform an extensive amount of video editing or your disk is nearing full, in which case it may be useful. Defragmenting is generally not required under Mac OS X 10.3 or later TTP4 also includes an excellent disk defragmenter.
Likewise, TTP4 brings a host of useful hardware testing routines that are neither in DW4 nor the Apple Hardware Test. DW4 is a "specialist" in disk directories. While both can build a new, optimized directory for a disk, I have found there are some disks that only DW4 can repair.
As noted, Norton Utilities and Systemworks are both defunct and incompatible with Tiger.