Hi Ron, I think you are correct that the AV/Firewall programs are attempting to become full security suites at the customers expense. I'm holding off purchasing any new software till SP2 goes gold and the security programs have an opportunity to produce programs which will be compatible. Linux is looking better all the time<G> Mike ******* Mike's REPLY SEPARATOR ********* On 7/23/2004 at 5:14 PM chizotz@xxxxxxxxx wrote: Hi Mike, There are several points that really upsets me about this situation. First, in my opinion it is _never_ acceptable for a company to require that a competing product be removed before it will install. I understand, perhaps better than most, how that can put companies between a rock and a hard place, but it is simply, utterly unacceptable in my opinion. The real rub is that Zone Alarm charges a fee for their upgrade/update program, and that this requirement was _not_ a part of the deal when I purchased the product. They made a unilateral decision to include functionality that a competing product interferes with, and, rather than offer an option for a version of their product without that problem or any of the other possibilities open to them, they are forcing all of their customers to either comply or do without the upgrade they have paid for. In this case, complying with the requirement Zone Alarm is imposing will cost me the licensing fee I've paid to their competitor, Trend Micro, which they do not propose to compensate me for -- much less tell me what I'm supposed to do about an Anti-Virus solution to replace Trend Micro that is as good or better than Trend Micro. In my opinion, Zone Alarm has no business integrating any Anti-Virus functionality into their firewall product that might interfere with competing Anti-Virus packages. Likewise, Trend Micro has no business integrating firewall functionality into their Anti-Virus product that might interfere with competing firewall pakages. If either or both of these companies want to produce software that competes with the other, that's great! But they should not be allowed to bundle these products together, forcing their customers to have to make a choice between them. Each product should be able to compete directly with the other; let the user decide if they want the Zone Alarm firewall and the Trend Micro AV, or the Zone Alarm firewall and Norton AV, or the Trend Micro firewall and McAfee AV, or _whatever_ combination the user chooses. This bundling of different software in one package has gotten way, way out of hand. It introduces all sorts of problems, such as filesize and resource requirement bloat when the user really only wants and needs a particular piece of a software package; the consumer buys a particular piece of software as the best solution to a particular problem, but is forced to take a lot of other, perhaps useless (to that consumer), junk along with it. Now we're seeing competing products actually requiring that their competetor's product be uninstalled to function which simply can _not_ be good for competition nor for the consumers who are affected. I'm a consumer. I don't want Trend Micro's firewall, I want Zone Alarm which I believe to be the best firewall solution. I don't want Zone Labs Anti-Virus, I want Trend Micro which I believe to be the best AV solution. That's why I paid money to both companies, and that's why I'm the loser, no matter which way you look at it or which way I go, when these companies bundle their products together and force the consumer to take it or leave it. OK, rant over... for the moment. Ron For a web-based membership management utility and information on list policies, please see http://nibec.com/24hoursupport/ To unsubscribe, send a blank email to 24hoursupport-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" (without quotes) in the subject.