Norton Systemworks 2.0 for Mac

by Symantec

Product Features

• Protects your Mac against viruses and mallware
• Aladdin Removes old Software
• Retrospect Express Backup
• Optimizes Performance

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces
• ASIN: B000065CFD
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 1, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,860 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Norton Systemworks 2.0 for Mac

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Do Not Use In New PowerMac !, August 2, 2002

By 

R. Alexander "kunsanbob" (St Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

DANGER! DANGER! This software is not ready for primetime, at least on the new PowerMac G4 dual processor computer. I used my Mac seamlessly for 3 weeks. After loading Systemworks my computer freezes regularly and the disk drive I used Disk Doctor on crashes every five days or so (granted Disk Doctor can restore it, but that's still unsatisfactory). I am not the only one having these problems, just go to apple.com support and do a "Systemworks" search under OS X.

The freezes seem to be dependent on time. As the computer runs certain processes begin to slow (connecting to cameras, accessing drives, etc.) then it just freezes, requiring a reboot. This happens rather consistently. It has been suggested as a theory that Filesaver may somehow keep OS X from deleting temp files. The behavior I observe does support some sort of cache or memory over flow (I've got 512 MB so it's not my configuration causing this).

I'm hoping that an uninstall and a reintialization of the affected harddrive will restore me to normal ops. If not, I'll have to reinstall the operating system from scratch...

These are my observations, install this program at your own risk.

PS. The only reason I didn't give it a "1" is my computer did not burst into flames, I'm feeling rather generous today.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SystemWorks fixes "Keys out of order"-and earns a thumbs up!, April 8, 2002

By 

W. Eccles (Tolland, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

...For some reason...but probably related to powering on and off the Firewire CD burner, forcing Finder to restart, and having problems with Toast simultaneously, my VST 30GB SmartDisk went Kaplooey!... OS X would "see" it (a check of the console log indicated that it was being found but there was an "fsck failure"--such a helpful message) and report that I should use the Disk Utility on it. Disk Utility reported the oft-mentioned "Keys out of order" error message of death, claimed to fix it, and accomplished nothing after repeated verifications and repairs.

According to several websites, though Apple remains silent on the matter, the only way to fix this problem is to reformat the drive, an unacceptable proposition. I began the march through my utilities.

Norton Utilities 4.0 and 5.0 wouldn't touch it--the drive is Firewire and couldn't be seen without an attempt to mount it by the Finder causing the "format or forget it" message. Same for DiskWarrior 2.1. Techtools 3.0.5 wouldn't do it, either, for still yet the same reason. FWB HDT can't fix anything. Bottom line, anything running in Classic or OS 9 wouldn't do anything with the drive other than offer to format it for me and I had nothing native to OS X. So I ordered SystemWorks which claims to be the OS X utility for everything.

Surprisingly, it worked! It fixed the "keys of death" problem and (poof!) my drive was back and in good health. As best I can tell, no data were lost. In other words, I had a very, very positive experience. Where Disk Utility absolutely falls flat on its face, SystemWorks came through!

I highly recommend the product, even though I haven't checked out a single one of its other features.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars SystemWorks for Mac lives up to Windows Tradition -Yikes!, December 14, 2002

By 

Timothy Gompf "docgompf" (Plant City, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Much like my experience with Norton SystemWorks for the PC, this product's installation immediately had drastically negative effects on my new iMac G4's performance. Everything seemed effected... mouse clicking, typing, web browsing, dragging & dropping, movement of/through through menus, scrolling through mailboxes... everything became excruciatingly slower. DVD playback which was perfect became choppy to the point of being unenjoyable. There were other problems too. DiskDoctor gave me "out of memory" errors during a routine scan of my HD (I have 512MB of RAM!). Essentially DiskDoctor could not complete all of its tasks unless I manually canceled all of the tasks except the one that I wanted to complete. This meant that the program had to be run 3-4 times just to do one complete scan. SpeedDisk also couldn't complete a HD defragmentation without errors, even after getting DiskDoctor to confirm that the disk was error free. Overall, this was a very disappointing product. Thankfully, when I dragged SystemWorks and all its associated folders and preferences to the trash and restarted my iMac all was back to normal. I guess I should have learned better than to purchase this product after my similar experiences on Windows PCs with earlier versions. Maybe it will be useful to keep around for emergencies, but keeping it installed is certainly not an option.. that is if I want to keep my system working!