Rant: McAfee

I’ve been using McAfee for years. But not any more. In no particular order, here’s why:

As far as I can tell, the actual virus protection part works well. But the update process? AWFUL. When it works, great. But every couple of weeks it gets confused and tries to update the virus definitions every few hours. The only fix, remove and re-install.

And what is up with the frequent need to reboot just for virus definition updates? Sounds like lazy programing to me.

And why for the love of god does the software not play well with system restore. Gee, I wonder if anyone ever uses system restore when they’ve had a virus (or other problem for that matter). It took Microsoft long enough to offer it, you’d think even a 3-legged moronic turtle could keep up with that.

Spam Checker: AWFUL. I removed this POS seconds after it marked 90+% of my Inbox as spam and refused to let me mark it as “not spam”. To make matters worse, it screws with the subject line of the email, adding SPAM to the start of it. REALLY HELPFUL GUYS.

I think the software is damn expensive for what it is. Why hasn’t it gotten any cheaper? It’s certainly gotten cheaper for the company to distribute and with net paranoia as it is, their customer base must have grown by millions.

Why then is it still so damn expensive???

And my real issue: I don’t like having a gun held to my head. If I discontinue my service (or if the updater can’t reach McAfee to validate my license for that matter) the software is just disabled. What the hell? I’ve been paying for the damn software. If I stop my subscription, it should continue to work and just get out of date. Yes, that means I have exposure, but I still have some semblance of protection for all the money I paid. But to stop working all together? That’s BS.

This software is a resource HOG. I am sick and tired of having what should be a background process take over my machine.

Given how often you have to go back to the damn site and login, you’d think they would make the login button EASY TO FIND. They recently changed things to make this a bit easier, but still, it sucks.

It would also be nice if the download area of the site had decent uptime. Three times in the last year it has been down. And I’ve usually been reinstalling because of other stupid bugs.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I had need of a system restore, which broke McAfee. I logged in to the site to download and re-install (yet again). Sure would be nice if they had a generic installer that you could just download once and was smart enough to grab the necessary updates, but that’s another topic.

Anyway, I go through all the BS of verifying that I do pay them money and getting to the download link. I agree again to the license agreement and finally reach... a PAGE NOT FOUND error.

In case it’s my ISP, my PC, my bad or whatever, I try several times. Same result. With trepidation I go to the support section and request live help. I’m routed to customer service, not tech support, because it’s a download issue. I type in a short, not rude, summary for the guy: “I’m logged in, trying to download the install. I agree to the license agreement, click the button and get a page not found error. Is there a problem with your site???”.

Easy enough, right?

“How may I help you today?”

Oh boy.

Re-paste what I already wrote.

“Are you having problems with a download?”

Well, duh. Re-iterate my problem.

“You have a technical problem. You need tech support.”

Great, another 10 minutes to be wasted. So I ask “Do you have problems with your site”

“If you are experiencing difficulty with your internet connection”

HELLO. WE’RE USING LIVE CHAT AREN’T WE???

At that point I got a little rude and demanded to know if there was in fact a problem with their site that would prevent me from downloading my much needed install program.

“We are experiencing some problems at this time”

Bastard! After all this time and BS. I mentioned that my account was up for renewal and that he had thoroughly convinced me to take my business elsewhere.

sigh