Sophos / McAfee

[Gerry Doris]

> I will collect people's thoughts if you want me to. But an up-to-date
> view of people's opinions would help. My attitude is that if you can
> afford Sophos then buy it, else go for F-Prot (but which version?).
> --
> Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
> jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
> Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
>                             Southampton SO17 1BJ

Well, just my $0.02 worth...

My knee jerk choice would be Sophos as they seem to be well established
with a solid engine and heavy duty support.  However, they simply aren't
interested in the home/hobby market place.  Their pricing reflects their
focus on large companies.  I'm a home user.

F-PROT was willing to allow their small business package to be used by
home/hobbiests free of charge.  I assume it's working but I haven't
detected any virii since it went in (just after I installed it I dropped
off some problem lists that generated a lot of virii and most other lists
instituted virus scanning).  In fact, spam and virus scanning seems to be a
feature being added by many list maintainers.  I've heard that even ISP's
are thinking about it.

I'm not totally certain about the differences between the F-PROT Small
Business edition and their Enterprise edition.  They look like they use the
same engine and virus files.  However, the Enterprise version seems to have
some additional features ie command line interface and claims to be able to
integrate with other 3rd party packages.

The big differentiator with F-PROT from what I can see is that their
pricing is by server NOT by seat like Sophos or McAfee.  My impression is
that they are a capable group who would like to gain market share.  Hence
their willingness to be more flexible on pricing.  My only contact with
them was handled in a quick courteous professional fashion.


Gerry
--
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to learne" Chaucer