Symantec demos Project Guru at Demo 09

Are you sick of trying to diagnose your friends' computer problems over the phone?

Symantec is showing a demo on Tuesday at the Demo 2009 conference in Palm Desert, Calif., of a Web-based tool that allows tech savvy people to provide remote support to friends and family having computer problems.

Project Guru allows a user to connect remotely to another computer to troubleshoot and correct problems, with the connection secured using encryption and authentication. The tool offers diagnostic tools for network monitoring and identifying software installed on the remote computer.

The software uses that same internally developed technology as Symantec's Software as a Service Online Remote Access offering and is complementary to NortonLive PC help services, which offers round-the-clock phone support.

Project Guru is in pilot release with select partners and is planned for pilot release to customers in the second half of the year, Symantec said.

Project Guru lets people diagnose problems on remote computers over the Web.

(Credit: Symantec)

[Dalmatian28]

...o noooooo!!!! I moved to another continent ( from Europe to USA) to run away from my family and their problems. Are you trying to tell me that even distance will not help me when my sister messes up her computer in Austria and than ask me to fix it (for free of course)? Did Symantec's Management ever thought about people like me that work in tech-industry but hate helping friends and relatives that are noting more but a bunch of freeloaders. It is easy to say NO to strangers, but how am I going to do that with my family, friends and even my girlfriend who owns huge number of PC's. How is this progress??? Thank you for nothing....nice way to kick me when I am down! aaah!!!

[Dave Howe]

And now you get to pay stupidly high transatlantic phone calls at 2am while you walk them though installing it.....

[merelogic]

The first line of the article should have said something like 'Are you sick of fixing computers OVER THE PHONE'

[bmn_1213]

Sounds a lot like Fogcreek's Copilot (http://copilot.com), which has been around for quite a while now.

[dahicke]

AVOID Symantec and Norton. Symantec has resorted to make virus-ware products that do not uninstall and are difficult to remove. I would recommend avoiding their products at all costs. They have become an Unethical company. I would not be surprised if they are not creating and distributing viruses, worms, Trojan horses etc. to bolster their own business. Their Norton Security Scan is one of these virus-ware products that is hard get off a computer. I have tried un-installing 4 times and it re-installs itself at logon.

[jl8013]

dahicke, have you try the removal tool from norton website? Here is the link to it: http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039