Is support for Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac going to be discontinued soon?

Hello Colin,

We will eventually migrate all users of the "classic" Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition to the new Sophos Home, but there is no specific date for this. Until this happens we will continue to fully support both versions.

Today users get to choose which version works best for them. We would like to believe that as Sophos Home gains more features and rich functionality, users will want to migrate from the "classic" version to that spiffy version.

The technical challenge with the automatic migration is that (as of today) anyone using Sophos Home needs to set up their account before installing the software. Obviously that won't work for the existing users who don't yet have an account. That team is working on various solutions to that challenge, but also doing a lot of feature development. Its always a matter of balancing the priorities.

Hope that helps.

Hi Bob,

Well, I am impressed to have received a message from the Big White Chief.  Thank you, I'm feeling very reassured now that I've heard from you, but also that 9.5.2 'classic' 'Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition' is in the process of being released.  As I've mentioned, 9.5.2 workes fine for me (although it seemed to take a lot of time to open on a complete startup).  I shall continue to test it on my backup drive.

I had previously installed the new Sophos Home on my backup drive, but was very disappointed with its features.  That version has now been zapped, as I erased the drive in order to clone from my normal startup drive - and I've now got the 9.5.2 'classic' 'Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition' on the backup drive.  However, I did create an account to test the new Sophos Home, so I expect it will still work at a later date when more features are added to make it worthwhile to change to the new Sophos Home.

As it happens, I shall be installing the "classic" Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition on a (retired GP) friend's next week, so I'm doubly relieved that I'm advising him correctly.

Finally, I wonder if a statement from Sophos to the effect of what you have written to me would be a good idea.  It can't be just me who has been confused.

Thanks again for your input.

Hi Bob,

Well, I am impressed to have received a message from the Big White Chief.  Thank you, I'm feeling very reassured now that I've heard from you, but also that 9.5.2 'classic' 'Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition' is in the process of being released.  As I've mentioned, 9.5.2 workes fine for me (although it seemed to take a lot of time to open on a complete startup).  I shall continue to test it on my backup drive.

I had previously installed the new Sophos Home on my backup drive, but was very disappointed with its features.  That version has now been zapped, as I erased the drive in order to clone from my normal startup drive - and I've now got the 9.5.2 'classic' 'Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition' on the backup drive.  However, I did create an account to test the new Sophos Home, so I expect it will still work at a later date when more features are added to make it worthwhile to change to the new Sophos Home.

As it happens, I shall be installing the "classic" Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition on a (retired GP) friend's next week, so I'm doubly relieved that I'm advising him correctly.

Finally, I wonder if a statement from Sophos to the effect of what you have written to me would be a good idea.  It can't be just me who has been confused.

Thanks again for your input.

Hello Colin,

If you haven't already, please post some feedback into the Sophos Home forum. They really appreciate hearing what features users need. Here is the link to their forum:

https://community.sophos.com/products/sophos-home/

Coincidentally, all four Macs in our house have automatically updated from the 'classic' 'Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition' 9.4.2 to 9.5.2 this morning.  We didn't prompt them - they updated on machine startup.  All of them are running on El Capitan 10.11.6

One of the Macs (a new Mac Mini) did show a window announcing that Sophos Ant-Virus is not running, but that went away within a minute.

All looking good to me.

Thank you for your help, and for making 9.5.2 now live.

(If only all the features could be added into the new 'Sophos Home'.)