Straight talking: Credits of the crunch

Pollyanna always looked on the bright side. So she'll be seeing the economic crunchdown as a wonderful opportunity to shake up the IT industry.

We are no longer buying for the sake of buying, or upgrading out of curiosity – we need persuading to pay. Those people in sales, marketing and PR will only keep their jobs if they start showing some interest in what they are selling.

The threat of Linux has already made Microsoft face reality by reprieving XP and sidelining Vista by promoting Windows 7.

Open Office is undermining the price structure for Microsoft Office. Filemaker for Windows is far easier to use than Access but over-featured and over-priced for many users. If the credit crunch brings a more affordable, stripped-down version of Filemaker, Microsoft will be in more trouble.

It can't be long now before Symantec wakes up to wonder how any consumer can work out which of the many similar but different Norton protection packages to buy.

Symantec will also have to rethink its crazy pricing structure that makes buying online, and then struggling to burn an emergency boot disc, no cheaper than buying a boxed version with Recovery CD.

In the US aggrieved customers have started legal action because some Symantec software, such as Norton 360, insists on the removal of other Symantec software, such as Norton Utilities. Iolo's System Mechanic is busy filling the market gap created by Symantec's marketing.

I have been looking for the perfect backup program since Norton Ghost abandoned the bomb-proof trick of dropping the PC out of Windows and into Dos to make an exact copy of the C drive.

Several colleagues recommended Acronis. Maybe, but the company first needs to look at its customer support service. When I tried True Image Home 2009 I found a big difference between the way privileged press and paying customer queries are answered.

The Acronis press office provided answers fast, but when I put a consumer question (on problems creating the backup Secure Zone and using a wireless mouse with the rescue software) the Acronis support service took six weeks to come up with half a reply and blamed the delay on "problems with our email database".