TechVirtuoso

Companies react to offering up Security Essentials through Microsoft Update

November 6th, 2010 at 12:12 PM  1 Comment

You know you’re probably doing something right when three of your biggest competitors start acting like the world has come to an end. In this case, it’s Microsoft versus the anti-virus world.

While we like to stress the importance of anti-virus products on all platforms, they’re sort of like insurance companies. Their products are usually expensive and bloated, and when you really need them most of the time they’re not that effective. Microsoft’s Security Essentials product is arguably one of the best anti-virus products on the market, and it’s free, and it’s got traditional vendors like Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro scared. Even more so now that Microsoft has begun distributing the software to users directly through it’s Microsoft Update service.

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Intel buys McAfee, way overpays for an ineffective engine

August 19th, 2010 at 11:18 AM  No Comments

I’m not sure I would have paid $29 for a copy of McAfee, but Intel decided it was wise to go all in and spend almost $8 billion to acquire them.

Of all the security companies out there Intel had their choice of, they picked one of the most bloated and ineffective scanning engines, and the one that has one the worst track record when it comes to false positives that eat your computer alive.

I can say that having spent almost 4 years managing their corporate suite, and having their software updates crash my systems (I eventually dumped their software for Microsoft Forefront) and rebuild my configuration multiple times, I’m not looking forward to them integrating their technologies on Intel chips.

(McAfee Press Release)