Re: Sophos Anti-Virus

[Patrick D Menard <pmenard () UNLNOTES UNL EDU>]

We've used Sophos as a campus-wide solution for departments and students
since version 5. (which overcame many of the updating limitiations of
version 4) Probably the biggest issue we have with the product is that our
standard installer fails 10-15% of the time. The failure rate is much
higher for students than for departments. (20% for students vs 3-5% for
departments). The installation problems occur much more often on XP Home
than any other OS version. (which is why the failure rate is higher with
students)

When working with Sophos initially, they were surprised we were using XP
Home, and I got the impression that the product was never tested on that
version of the OS. Many of the workarounds they suggest don't work because
of how XP home "protects" end users by removing some of the system tools,
which requires taking a spin through the registry instead.

We've found some workarounds for most problems, but there still are 2-3% of
the student computers that won't be able to install Sophos no matter what
we try. (even on clean installs of Windows) For those few we end up
recommending they install AVG or one of the other standalone AV scanners.

Patrick Menard
Active Directory Project Coordinator
Information Services
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

"Walker, Sam" <swalker () wvsom edu> wrote on 05/11/2007 03:24:15 PM:

> Hello.  I was inquired about anyone currently using Sophos as an
> anti-virus product.  I have viewed the product through an on-line
> web cast via a sales rep but wished to obtain actual end-user
> opinions before proceeding with installing a demo locally.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Sam Walker
> WVSOM