"Central Point Software had disappeared!  I always wondered if MS bought them out."

IIRC, Central Point was one of the scores of small companies swallowed and discarded by Symantec as they bulldozed their way to the top.

I also was quite fond of "Compress", as well as many of their other "PC Tools" utilities.

WELL, regardless, of whether they were "Swallowed", "Discarded", "merged" or just bought out, the loss of Central Point Software and their most excellent "PC Tools" utilities package, it was a dark day for us tech's that had come to rely on them.  I shudder to think of the computers that I "SAVED" using the PC Tools.  It boggles the mind!

I was so happy to see "Defrag" and "Backup", show up in MSDos.  They looked so much like the apps from PC Tools. 
That's some of the best software to ever come out of Microsoft, in my own humble opinion.

One member said something about an on-going battle with Symantec over support for their programs.
My take on that is that everything you may need is available "Elsewhere" and there is never any need to communicate with Symantec at all.
(sorry Nigel)

In the 28 years that I've been a PC tech, I've never contacted Symantec, not even once.  And, I've used several programs that they 'absorbed' from other companies.  The best help, I've found, is from other users.  Still is!

Thank you RAD, for a great place to compare notes with other users.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow

Dan Goodell wrote on Jul 7^th, 2008 at 6:29am:

Well, yeah, since semantics is the study of meaning.

[ I know Americans sometimes use the word "semantics" oddly, to mean something unimportant or a trivial distinction, but I have to say I find that practice somewhat baffling since it's really the exact opposite of the way it's defined. I presume this linguistic inversion has arisen in a reaction to the amount of turgid, irrelevant waffle in literary academic semiotics - "post-modernism" at its worst - but it's strange to a technologist since semantics in formal logic (as employed in computer sciences) is deep, precise, and of considerable daily practical importance. ]

The simple fact is that the primary implication - that Symantec acts in a predatory manner, acquiring healthy companies with the intent of shutting them down - is not how Symantec or indeed pretty much the vast majority of consolidation in any industry works.

Management or owners of companies in strife often seek acquisition as the best way to do two things: first, realize the current value of their paper investment in the business and take that as cash before it becomes worthless and secondly to provide the best way of providing their employees with an environment which will maintain their jobs, instead of continuing in a way that will leave nothing for anyone. The people I know who found and grow businesses really do care about their employees (the exceptions being so well-known and notable precisely because they are rare). Symantec, for its part, in general tries pretty hard to keep the best people from acquisitions, because that's where a lot of the value in a technology company really lies.

Treating "Symantec" as the bad guy is at least somewhat understandable since folks develop a sentimental attachment to products or brands, and because business is full of time lags, so that when things do fail or get closed down it's perceived by outsiders as happening due to the current owner. However, the truth is usually different to what people on the outside believe, and the seeds of a business or a brand or a product failing (or succeeding!) are usually sown years in advance.

[ Reader of business books should, I hope, be familiar with the perceptual problems of time lags via the examples of unstable system dynamics and feedback in this book, just as most engineers are familiar with them via the study of oscillators and feedback-and-control systems. ]