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Symantec Drops Norton Utilities
Long-lived product now available only as part of SystemWorks.
Tom Mainelli, PCWorld.com
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Symantec has quietly stopped shipping the stand-alone version of its venerable Norton Utilities product, choosing instead to offer the software only as part of its SystemWorks suite.
More than 20 years old, Norton Utilities' long list of applications includes hard drive tools, Registry editors, and system information. PC World editors recognized the product's longevity in a piece on classic utilities in the 20th Anniversary Issue.
Suite Wins Out
Symantec decided last September to discontinue the stand-alone product. The company stopped shipping Norton Utilities in March 2003, says Tom Powledge, a group product manager.
As a result, the upgrade path for owners of Norton Utilities is to SystemWorks, Powledge says. SystemWorks sells for $70, but owners of the Utilities product get a mail-in rebate of $30. That leaves the final price at about $40, or $10 more than the former Utilities upgrade price of $30, he says.
For that extra $10 you get all the additional features of SystemWorks, which includes Norton AntiVirus, CleanSweep (for removing Web-related junk files), and GoBack Personal (for system restoration), he says.
Symantec decided to stop offering Utilities because the vast majority of buyers had switched over to SystemWorks, which the company introduced in 1998, Powledge says. "The utilities are related, and they're well integrated here. You get a price break when you buy the suite, and that's how most people began buying them."
With SystemWorks selling well, and the demand for stand-alone Norton Utilities waning, the course was clear, he says. "It was a natural evolution of the marketplace," Powledge says.
The PC marketplace, that is. While PC owners have to buy SystemWorks to get a new version of Norton Utilities, Apple fans can still buy the stand-alone version for the foreseeable future. Symantec introduced the Mac versions of Norton Utilities and SystemWorks later, and those buyers haven't switched over to the larger suite yet, Powledge says.
Mixed Reaction
Dennis Hevron, director of technical services at the Mesquite Independent School District in Mesquite, Texas, says he is relieved to learn Norton Utilities will live on, if only as part of SystemWorks. He says he was originally told Symantec would drop the utilities product altogether.
That would have made things tough on his small staff of eight IT workers, who support more than 18,000 PCs.
"Norton Utilities is the first thing we load on most PCs, even before the word processor," he says. When there's a problem with a PC, the help desk asks the user to try the software before doing anything else. Of course it depends on the problem, but WinDoctor fixes up a lot of things."
Hevron says he'll likely budget the necessary funds to buy SystemWorks in the future, even though he'd prefer to stick with the stand-alone product. With SystemWorks he'll pay more and end up with some duplicated programs, as well as others he won't use.
"I don't need everything that is included there--we already have corporate antivirus software. CleanSweep is okay, but I don't need GoBack," Hevron says.
His biggest concern: that Symantec keeps developing the Utilities, even though it's now only part of a bigger suite. While the current versions works fine on today's operating system, future Windows will require an updated product, he says.
Symantec executives say they'll keep supporting and enhancing the product.
"We'll continue to improve those utilities, and we'll make sure they're properly integrated into the whole package," Powledge says.
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