Why McAfee is still at the top of my Not Recommended list

[Chiefcrowe]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/why-mcafee-is-still-at-the-top-of-my-not-recommended-list/3567

 

[M0RPH]

I used to do phone support for Dlink, and one of my best troubleshooting steps was asking them to remove their McAfee. Frequently fixed all kinds of strange problems.

 

[Slugbait]

About 10 years ago I came home, turned on my monitor, and saw a warning from InnocuLan stating that it's holding off Klez from infecting my shared partition. After dismissing that dialog, another one came up stating it was holding off Nimda.

My wife worked from home, using a company-issued laptop, and I asked her if her anti-virus threw up at all: "No". I had her run a quick scan with McAfee...nada. Checked the signatures, they were about a week old (back then, default option for checking for updates was once a week), but the sigs were not as old as Klez or Nimda which had been released a couple months earlier. So we downloaded the L&G sigs, and lo' and behold, McAfee reported she was infected...but immediately suffered epic fail to clean her machine.

So I uninstalled it, installed InnocuLan, and it happily cleaned her machine (took about six hours though, everything was infected). A couple of days later she insisted that I had to re-install McAfee, because it was an IT requirement from her company. They were quite insistent about it.

I told her that since I paid 100% of the broadband cable fees, and that it was my home network and my machines, that her only option with a machine running McAfee was dial-up.

She informed her IT dept. that she wouldn't be using McAfee any longer.

But I digress, I weep for Intel. I just hope they don't do what I think they're going to do...

 

[Chiefcrowe]

what do you think Intel is going to do?

 

[Slugbait]

what do you think Intel is going to do?

I think they're going to embed it in their chipsets...eventually. For now they're just targeting network appliances.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd run nothing before running McAfee.

 

[xSauronx]

i work part-time as an intern at a large area hospital while im going to uni. for the last 2 - 3 months ive been trying to help the mcafee team fix the several hundred non-compliant machines listed in the console

ive found that half the problem at the hospital is related to the admins: theyre incompetent. they have no idea why some machines have the old agent, why some have no agent, why some arent updating DATs, why some arent talking to our epo servers but are updating from the nai repository, or which machines they should actually have in the epo inventory

i have found the reason for part (maybe much) of the issues: the fucking morons are, unbeknowst to any of them, pushing out the old agent every day at 5am, which just ends up removing the modern agent.

what i dont know is why such machines with the modern agent havent contacted the epo server in 30 days in the first place.

/rant

maybe if mcafee gets "fixed" at work i can hate it for being it self, instead of because of the horrible admins that run it.

 

[Slugbait]

My fear may be announced in two months: http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/20/intel-mcafee-hybrid-security/

 

[jadinolf]

I'd run nothing before running McAfee.

I felt the same way about Norton.

 

[lxskllr]

My fear may be announced in two months: http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/20/intel-mcafee-hybrid-security/

:^S

It /may/ not be entirely terrible. I don't think Intel would want performance sacrificed for onboard security, but only time will tell.

I felt the same way about Norton.

Norton has straightened itself out acceptably. I don't like the concept of requiring a separate tool to remove software, but it's better than it was. Avira is playing bundling games with the newest free edition, but the pay for should still be alright. There's always MSE too. Not my favorite, but an acceptable choice.

I think McAfee's strong suit is the central management features for enterprise use. That's not something I'm familiar with, nor need, but is compelling for business use.

 

[Slugbait]

I don't think Intel would want performance sacrificed for onboard security, but only time will tell.

It's not performance that I'm concerned about.

 

[lxskllr]

It's not performance that I'm concerned about.

What are you thinking; hardwired DRM?

 

[Slugbait]

What are you thinking; hardwired DRM?

No. I'm thinking McAfee.

In my fraking hardware.

 

[gsellis]

No. I'm thinking McAfee.

In my fraking hardware.

Oh great. Put that freaking image in my head. Now I will have nightmares. You are not a nice person Slugbait.

 

[HeXen]

I felt the same way about Norton.

the new Norton is awesome. most slickest non annoying thing i ever used. its literally like not having one installed and its caught some oddball stuff for me and saved me from visiting a few bad websites with its icons in the google searches.