The offline installer debate

oblivion

I've read the several message threads around the offline installer thing, and I think I see both sides.

 

Seems to me the provision of an offline installer is justified, it's just complicated.

 

Say, for instance, a support engineer from a reseller is asked to replace an old, u/s or FUBARed AV on a machine. Don't know about you, but I'd FAR rather do as much cleaning as possible, followed by the install of a trusted system disconnected from the network, even if the engine I was installing was only up-to-date a month ago: once it's on and the system is at least reasonably (if not certifiably) okay, I'd hope that the updates would be enough to do the last bit without massive network requirements of a (maybe rural) client site?

 

I get that F-Secure would rather ensure the most up-to-date everything if at all possible, but it it really impossible to come up with a compromise that could be said to be "good enough"?

 

 

Simon

I wonder if many others of the major AV vendors offer an offline installer?  The last time I tried Bitdefender, that was definitely an online installer, but you can also purchase a CD, which, presumably, is the full installer package.  I'm not saying that one should or shouldn't be available, as I can see things from both perspectives, but comparisons might be interesting.

oblivion

Don't know about majors: I've been doing an evaluation of AV products for my own purposes (just trying to find something that doesn't cause my 4-year-old netbook to slow to a crawl in normal usage) and the only one I've found with an offline installer so far was Avast. (No it wasn't: Comodo did too! Sorry!) I think Eset used to (but I haven't checked for a few years) but, to be honest, I care less about keeping up with the competition than I do about having a solution that works for more than just stereotypical "install to a new PC by a dumb user" scenarios.

 

If you trust your network to do some of the heavy lifting on the security front, a network install isn't necessarily a big deal. But not everyone is even behind a secured router, seems to me, and making it possible to increase security before connecting the internet to the PC seems to me to be a good thing to be able to offer.

asanka

Offline installer is a must.imagine a situation where you have to install internet security on more than 500 machines 😈.they must release an offline installer,if they want their products to be popular and more business.all other vendors have offline installers except f secure.if the online installer is the future ,how come other vendors are still using offline installers? ?f secure should listen to their customers .i have been using and selling f secure for a long time.everything is fine.only drawback is online installer.i hope f secure will provide us a solution asap.

Tk