Sophos Free AntiVirus for Tiger PPC

Sophos is free, how are they luring us into buying a free software. Avast, another top antivirus software company will probably be offering their trial version Mac software for free in the new year. As a company with 20 years experience I would accept the Sophos Labs information with at least the same credulity as ClamXav which only offers partial protection. 90 minutes, in my case, is not excessive for 182,000 files. Once this scan is complete, it won't be necessary again because the real time monitoring + updating will continuously keep my Mac safe. To suggest that Macs will not become increasingly vulnerable to virus, spyware, malware attacks at some point in the future in naive. You obviously have some bias against Sophos which is your right, but I will continue to give Sophos a fair test, will report back about my experience.

Either before or after a few uses, I got a "nag screen" asking to donate to ClamXav.

As a fairly new Mac user, not much of a techie, not of the computer generation, this is my personal Sophos experience after a week of usage. There are 2 pdf manuals on the Sophos website (the install manual + the user manual) you can get which explains all aspects of the software, made the whole process easier for me. The install was easy, then Sophos asks to scan my complete drive (no infected files) as well as get from their server the entire virus database with more than 2 million viruses, trojans, worms. Then the "on-access" scanning kicks in with continual protection. Sophos seems to work with very little system slowdown, except my iMacG4/800 takes an extra 30 sec. to boot up (not even a listing in Sys Prefs, Accounts, Startup items). The manual suggests running Sophos in the default mode. It is, however, highly configurable in the 5 Preference tabs, but they are extra careful requiring the user to unlock the lock in the bottom left corner before you can make any changes. The scan of my drive took 90 min. for 181,000 files/folders, a small inconvenience, once, to assure that my drive is clean (will probably not have to scan again with on-access running continuously). You can also configure selective scans if you want to continually monitor specific files/folders. The Sophos icon in the menu bar is black when the on-access scanning is fully functional, the icon becomes animated when Sophos is accessing its server to update the virus definitions (once per hour default). Putting your mouse cursor over the icon explains what is going on. Sophos also has right click functionally for scanning a particular file/folder. Sophos checks both Mac/Win threats. The only support for Sophos Mac Free is their website forum, which is always active with much discussion. I am happy that Sophos includes us Tiger PPC types, not many even paid AV software do. Also, Sophos, with 20 years experience in the enterprise/commercial space seems to be a reputable company with international resources, so I will happily continue to use Sophos AV Free, again, just my personal experience, each to his own. I will report if Sophos becomes problematic. Ken.

Just came across this very negative review of Sophos Mac Free from someone who was a former administrator in the forum. Just trying to gather all the info I can. Here is the link to the webpage:

http://openforum.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-Anti-Virus-for-Mac-Home/Why-is-it-free/td- p/49/page/2

Here is the quote:

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.

powerbook, it does not seem to slow down my system running in BG, (the only 2 exceptions being about 30 sec. longer to bootup my computer + some minor slowdown when Sophos is updating the virus definitions), while accomplishing everything else I want. This type of AV software is what I was used to when I was a PC user, where virus protection was an absolute necessity!! (Avast Free), am very comfortable with it, makes me feel safer. Ken.

After hearing all these varying experiences, just thinking will Sophos AV Mac Free run better on Tiger than it will on 10.6. I am running Sophos on an iMac G4/800, 768 megs of slower ram very smoothly without any issues or am I just lucky? I just saw this comprehensive review of Sophos on Secure Mac, check it out. Ken.

http://www.securemac.com/sophos-anti-virus-review.php