LIVE AND LEARN

we've been having some problems copying files to and from a firewire disk in the studio called "Zowie." It seems "Zowie" has some issues.

We asked our new version of OSX (10.4, aka "Tiger") to check out the disk and it confirmed that there were problems, but that it couldn't fix them.

In the past, Disk First Aid, and now "Disk Utility" in OSX, have been pretty good about fixing what they can and being honest about what they cannot. After several tries, Disk Utility couldn't help Zowie.

So we did what any red-blooded computer users would do - we started searching online for a snazzy disk utility to (legally) download. Yes, that's right, we decided to lay some money down and purchase a piece of software. Would be truly bizarre if we didn't do this kind of thing regularly.

Since my earliest computing days, Norton Utilities has been the standard. Their Disk Doctor has helped many a disk, and so it seemed natural to go to Symantec's website and see what they had for OSX.

Seems Norton Utilities 8.0 is the version we'd want. It says on the site that it's compatible with Mac OS 10.1.5 and higher. Great, we're higher than that.

So we enter in Jackon's credit card # (hard to believe, but Jackson actually now has one!) and download the magic.

Install, run live update, nothing works. Disk Doctor doesn't even SEE the drives.

Uninstall, install again. Fix permissions. Try again.

No good.

Finally we start poking around Yahoo! and find this.

I guess we should have looked around Symantec's website a bit more before ordering. But the incompatibility isn't even listed in system requirements.

Finally, several clicks away (and nowhere near the order page) is this. It doesn't even say, specifically, that Norton Utilities is not compatible with 10.4. It just says it won't work, and at the bottom of the page is some helpful uninstall info.

Well, they do have a refund system, which we are currently undergoing. It's just unbelievable that Symantec isn't more explicit on their product info page. I guess they're counting on people downloading and not asking for a refund. Pretty crappy.

Should we just have used Limewire and gotten a stolen utility instead?

Meanwhile, "Zowie" continues to have problems. Maybe "Disk Warrior" is next - assuming we can find and read all of the fine print.