I installed Norton Ghost 9.0 for the first time from my new SystemWorks 2005 CD, to play around with it, and it appears that Symantec has completely fubar'd the Ghost we all know and love (those of us who know and love it, that is).
I've been using Ghost since before Symantec acquired it from Binary Research (version 4.0), now they've went and turned Norton Ghost into a glorified backup program based on PowerQuest's Drive Image! No menu-driven DOS interface, no command line interface, just a stupid Microsoft .NET framework application (.NET is required now to install Ghost).
I hate it when companies try to 're-invent' a highly successful product and end-up with something that no longer even resembles the original version in functionality or features. And why on earth would Symantec use PowerQuest's crappy Drive Image code instead of adding Drive Image's features to the more powerful Ghost code? That would be like FireFox deciding they were going to use Internet Explorer as their core instead of Mozilla. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
Drive Image was more popular with the masses (consumers) because it was more simple to use than Ghost, which of course means it wasn't as robust or powerful as Ghost, either. So to appeal to the masses, Symantec took a powerful utility and consumerized it (i.e. castrated), turning it into just another backup program with absolutely no unique features.
I hope it is as successful as the Titanic. The last version of Ghost to preserve the original concept and functionality that became synonymous with Ghost seems to be 8.0/8.2, but that is a corporate/enterprise version and you need to purchase at least 10 licenses.
At least we still have Ghost 7.5/2003 Release 2 with full NTFS support. Bastids!
I've been using Ghost since before Symantec acquired it from Binary Research (version 4.0), now they've went and turned Norton Ghost into a glorified backup program based on PowerQuest's Drive Image! No menu-driven DOS interface, no command line interface, just a stupid Microsoft .NET framework application (.NET is required now to install Ghost).
I hate it when companies try to 're-invent' a highly successful product and end-up with something that no longer even resembles the original version in functionality or features. And why on earth would Symantec use PowerQuest's crappy Drive Image code instead of adding Drive Image's features to the more powerful Ghost code? That would be like FireFox deciding they were going to use Internet Explorer as their core instead of Mozilla. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!
Drive Image was more popular with the masses (consumers) because it was more simple to use than Ghost, which of course means it wasn't as robust or powerful as Ghost, either. So to appeal to the masses, Symantec took a powerful utility and consumerized it (i.e. castrated), turning it into just another backup program with absolutely no unique features.
I hope it is as successful as the Titanic. The last version of Ghost to preserve the original concept and functionality that became synonymous with Ghost seems to be 8.0/8.2, but that is a corporate/enterprise version and you need to purchase at least 10 licenses.
At least we still have Ghost 7.5/2003 Release 2 with full NTFS support. Bastids!
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