Considering Updating to Avast SBS Version... Questions

Maintenance is up on my Trend Micro Worry Free Advanced for 33 XP Pro workstations, a windows 2000 applications server and a Small Business Server 2003 Standard, using all features including Exchange email.

Is there going to be a version 5? Some other AV providers have dropped their SBS products, or are not updating them.

Does the product have a network console that runs on the windows 2000 server, providing install/updates/status/tools for servers and workstations.

Do I have to buy the server version and the sbs suite in order to achieve this objective? The windows 2000 server is just a dumb server without server services, needed for older applications.

I’ve already gone through Symantec Corporate and Trend Micro and both are very network unfriendly, very user unfriendly and require a lot of hands on knowledge-base visits and tweaking to get them to run properly, then it starts all over with each update and/or patch.

I have been using Avast Home (Free Version) for a few years now and have been very pleased. As an IT professional I have at least 30-50 friends and family members using it on their home computers, all very happy with it, hoping that the SBS version is going to make me and everyone else just as happy.

Just added, tried to contact someone in pre-sales to answer these questions. The toll free telephone number is for Digital River, the authorized re-seller, and they told me that they don’t sell the product, can’t answer questions, even though it is available for download. The re-sellers listed for USA/Florida all seem to be small fly-by-night individual companies that I won’t deal with.

I submitted the pre-sales questions using their contact form a couple of hours ago, no response.

What if I need technical support and there is nobody to contact, my servers and network are down, etc.

I think that is why I went with Trend Micro back in 2006, because I could not talk to anyone and nobody responded to my questions. I found this out by looking up my previous posts. I don’t like waiting around when I have good money to spend, so will probably end up with Kaspersky or something else.

I have a similar situation - would like some feedback from Avast regarding this!

contact one of the local resellers from your country (both of you :))
i believe they can help the best with this

next to that… besides an auto response that would be fast… what do you expect for response within a couple hours?
i know we (me too) like to get instant response but a company that has a lot of world wide customers will not be responding instantly (same day) on questions that have been send in… i never met a company with this kind of client-base that responds within 8 workday hours… also keep in mind that when you live in the US or in Asia/Australia that you have a big time difference (either they are sleeping or just quit work)

I don’t expect much - but have seen certain software companies give quick feedback in any case.

I don’t mind waiting - the Avast Server install I just did locked me out of my server, and I’m remote right now - so that’s wonderful! :stuck_out_tongue:

PS: I’m actually in India, but originally US-based…

(Just try the resellers/software providers here - you’ll freak out with how hopeless they are!)