When 140 characters aren't enough...

I love my Zune, but I often get teased by my iPod loving friends and family that I must be one of three Zune users. I know there are a lot more Zune users, but I have yet to run in to any of them at the gym.

One of my favorite Zune features is the Zune Pass. I like be able to pick up and drop music on a whim and the Zune pass allows me to do that for $15.00 a month. In my apartment I use several virtual machines that perform various tasks. One of them hosts all of my music (among various other tasks) on a shared USB drive. I stream my Zune Pass music from this virtual machine to my XBox down stairs (I like to listen to music while I do the dishes). Since I only access this virtual server through its various services, the DRM licenses on my Zune Pass music expire causing an error when I try to access them from my XBox 360 console.

Normally the DRM licenses used by Zune Pass music is refreshed automatically when you try to the play a DRMed track, but playing an expired track on the XBox 360 doesn't cause a license refresh. So...

Zune Pass DRM + A host that never actually plays a music track itself + XBox 360 = :-(

Buried somewhere on a Microsoft forum I found an obscure reference to an undocumented (I didn't look very hard for any actual documentation) switch "refreshlicenses". Running "zune.exe -refreshlicenses" once a month forces all of the Zune Pass DRM licenses in my library to refresh without being played, allowing me to play everything on my XBox 360 once again!

Zune Pass DRM + A host that never actually plays a music track itself + XBox 360 + "zune.exe -refreshlicenses"  = :-)

Okay, so obviously not a lot of interest on my part when it comes to enterprise anti-virus, but it's time I finish what I started January 6th.  As a brief review of that post, I returned to work after the new year to discover that my network subscription to AVG was expiring.  I've been less and less impressed with the recent releases of AVG.  I was left wondering what other options existed.

The first most obvious step was to identify what other people had to say about the various other anti-virus options.  I turned immediately to my newly discovered community at SpiceWorks where I quickly discovered an overwhelming flow of information.  Conveniently, I discovered a user generated ranking (in the form of a forum poll) of the available anti-virus solutions.  The top three were:

1. AVG
2. Trend Micro
3. ESet NOD32

This ranking seemed to reflect what I discovered in the other forum discussions on the SpiceWorks network.  I began to pursue these three offerings and two days later I was able to make a confident decision. 

As I researched Trend Micro's NeatSuite Advanced I realized that in terms of product features (disregarding the personal firewall), TrendMicro didn't really offer anything compelling over AVG.  The interface wasn't any cleaning, the policy management options weren't any better, and I am absolutely certain that Trend Micro's products have their own quirks.  On the other hand, using AVG wouldn't require me to learn anything new.  I already know most of AVG's strange quirks and have already created workarounds for its incompatibilities.  And the most important deciding factor - it's cheaper for me to renew AVG then it would be for me to buy in to Trend Micro's products.  Incumbents for the win!

In the end I decided to renew AVG and move on to more important (and interesting) things.

By the way, I didn't forget about ESET's NOD32.  I contacted ESET for a full trial of their software, but it took them almost two weeks to send me the trial information.  I didn't even bother with them.  I'm not interested in dealing with a vendor that takes so long to respond to a sales request.  What kind of support can I expect from such a company once they've got my money?

When I got back to work on the 5th I discovered an obnoxious message from AVG waiting for me.  The message warns me that I only have X number of days before my virus protection expires every time I log in to my account.  Two years ago I would have renewed AVG without hesitation, but lately I've been loving AVG less.

Here are some of the issues I've encountered with AVG:

• Numerous application conflicts have require me to add a large number of exceptions to AVGs Resident Shield, and in some cases uninstall AVG completely.
  
• I find that the shared settings configurable through the admin tool are somewhat clumsy and I end up generalizing my configuration just so I don't have to create & manage a large number of smaller groups.  It would be awesome if shared settings could be applied list Group Policies are in Microsoft's Active Directory.
• Slow system scans take up a lot of system resources even when the process priority is set to low.
• The LinkScanner and Web Shield caused so many problems that I was facing a user revolt and had to disable them.
• The Instant Messaging component caused general mayhem and also had to be disabled.

Despite all the problems I've had with AVG I still thinks it's a good product, but I have to ask myself, "what else is out there?" 

Thus begins my search!  More to follow (as soon as I have some information)...