Obvious question.. but what are your reasons for offering this product for free?
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Hi cj
If you are running on-access scanning this will scan every file that you try to access, including USB sticks. Also you can run an on-demand scan (one that you initiate) to include all attached drives or create a specific custom scan just for particular folders.
Regards
Sunil
Hi pixturesk
Thanks for the question. To clarify what we mean about providing this software for free let me provide some more detail.
We intend to support this software version for free until the time comes to retire it (and we have no plans or timescale in mind as to when this will be). For all users on the free version we will provide protection updates until the retirement date. We tend to provide at least 12 months notice of any product retirement; this allows customers and users sufficient time to plan and we would provide a similar notice period for this product.
Trust this clears it up and gives you enough information to recommend it within your groups.
Warm regards
Sunil
JojoFrench wrote:
Hello !
This product was released a few days ago and we're already talking about "product retirement"...
:smileysurprised:
Hi JojoFrench,
Thanks for you question. I have a feeling there is some sarcasms in your post regarding "product retirement". :smileywink:
In the event you not being cheeky, YES, the product was recently released, but Sophos does not have a date for retirement. The process was only being described because the SophosFreeTalk community was asking. Let's change the subject so no false rumors propagate the Internet.
Did your first scan with Sophos AV for Mac Home Edition find any malware or Trojans?
This software is backed by the same high quality threat detection as our business-class software - so will detect, clean-up and quarantine to the same standards, it is not watered it down. However this is restricted just for home use.
Until recently I was an Administrator for Sophos for Mac, the paid version. I can state this is not the same software. I never had the issues with the Sophos client for Mac that I am having now.
While it may be true there is a component at its core that is the same as the business-class, it is NOT the business-class software I knew. If Sophos for Mac had been this buggy we would have ceased using it immediately. This necessarily begs the question - why didn't Sophos just release the existing Mac software?
Had Sophos done that, it would have been a much better experience for Sophos and its customers. There may be valid business reasons for not doing so, but in light of the tech costs that Sophos has to be accruing on a 'free' product it would seem this was not a great move for Sophos. I daresay that even at $99, Sophos for Mac (home edition) would have been an incredible bargain, at least based on my experiences with the Enterprise version of this software and how good it was. It just makes more sense to me than a clearly inferior product given away for free.
busterb wrote:… I never had the issues with the Sophos client for Mac that I am having now. …
The issues that I have with the normal edition, I had in the same way when I tested the Home Edition.
Differences
I suggest subscribing to
Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition: differences from the edition for business/enterprise
and slightly earlier http://openforum.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-Anti-Virus-for-Mac-Home/Drawbacks-compared-to-Sophos-Anti-Virus/m-p/53
Issues
Can you add (or find) a topic for each issue? Thanks …
Hello,
As I have said in a previous thread, yes Sophos detected a thread, but I deleted it.
Sophos AntiVirus is running very smoothly on my computer : the scan occurs without any issue, the update is fully transparent every 1 hour, and after a few settings the On Access shield alerts works perfectly fine.
In reply to busterb. I have been using the Sophos for Mac Free Edition for a week, working flawlessly. I am a fairly new Mac user, not much of a techie, not of the computer generation so this is my personal experience. I feel that Sophos free works for me the same way as Avast Free when I was using a PC. I have no requirement for the intricicies of the commercial/enterprise or paid version of the software. Until Sophos, the only free Mac AV was ClamXav which has no on-access scanning as far as I know. Sophos installed perfectly, the scan of my whole drive shows no infected files, the updater, on-access scanner work, as far as I can see, the way the manual says, with very little system slowdown (booting up my iMac G4/800 takes an extra 30 sec.). As a Mac Tiger PPC user, I am thankful for a company who creates software for us as well as the newer OS + hardware. I think we are getting quite adequate protection as Mac users with Sophos.
pixturesk wrote:In reply to busterb. I have been using the Sophos for Mac Free Edition for a week, working flawlessly.
Wonderful! I am happy your experience has not been as troublesome as others. Even so, I musk ask if you tried the manual scanning option.
pixturesk wrote:Until Sophos, the only free Mac AV was ClamXav which has no on-access scanning as far as I know.
Yes, it does. It's called ClamXav Sentry.
And ClamXav is what I am using right now to scan external drives since Sophos won't work for me, and I have now tried it on multiple Macs. There simply has to be something wrong with Sophos for Mac when it doesn't work on a brand-new install of OS X on a just-formatted drive with no third-party software installed, especially in light of it not being a universal problem. If Apple were behind it, one would think more would be reporting problems. Instead, like you, some are getting on in a smashing fashion.
As someone with nearly 30 year experience fixing computers, and two decades in IT, also being an ACTC and ACSP, I simply cannot understand how the Enterprise version worked so well, while the free version doesn't. In the Enterprise I was a part of we had the Mac clients updating directly from Sophos, so a local server is not something one can point to as a difference to explain the problems.
Bluntly put, my experience has been the 'free' version is buggy while the Enterprise version I worked with was a flawless dream. I just do not see how this could possibly be essentially the same program. Never - not even once - out of roughly 1,000 computers did we ever experience a lock-up caused by Sophos. And this experience runs the better part of a decade, mind you. As I stated once before, if Sophos the paid version had acted like the free version is now, we would have ripped it out of every computer and never used it again.
And I do not make an idle boast when I say a $99 price tag on the Enterprise-for-Home version of this software would be a steal. Seriously. I can't relate how easy my job was administering Sophos for Mac. It truly was a dream. If they could put that into a $99 copy of Sophos for the home user, by all rights it should come with a conviction and criminal record for theft.
But the software Sophos for Mac that is 'free' I classify as the most expensive software in the world.
busterb wrote:… doesn't work on a brand-new install of OS X on a just-formatted drive with no third-party software …
I took the issue reported across three topics, quoted to a separate topic:
Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition stops responding, total system lock-up and other misbehaviour when scanning a USB drive, or a folder, greater than 600 MB, on updated Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.6.3 with iWork, iLife and multiple partitions
