Intel to buy McAfee

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11025866

Both boards of directors have unanimously approved the deal, but the deal still requires McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory clearances.

Not a fan of McAfee, but does this mean that Intel chipsets will come with ex-McAfee 'add-ons'?

Hopefully they will send in a SWAT squad to show them how to write code that is not such a resource hog.

Good job I searched to see if someone had beaten me to it.

In my opinion it is thoroughly bad news!

The domestic versions of McAfee do very poorly on comparative tests, and many of us have bad memeories of it killing systems.

Not only that, but I cannot see how incorporating the technology into hardware or more likely firmware is not going to be detrimental to the performance of other IS systems, or even the machine as a whole if such are added by the user.

I suppose there could be a point for (smart)phones, but McAfee?

How are they going to update things anyway, and what power will be required?

Hello, this is your friendly security guard here. Please wait while we check your voicemail .

I found McAfee a bloated programme which seemed to cause problems on its own, never mind doing what it was supposed to.
But its most annoying feature was the renewal messages that began when the damn thing was still months before its renewal date, and popped up again and again. It was a great day when I got rid of it, and even then had to download tools to get rid of its remnants which blocked new antivirus programmes even after a proper Uninstall.
Perhaps Intel will sort it out, but I for one will take a lot of convincing before I would touch it again.

I love some of the comment here:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/08/19/136238/Intel-B...

McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.

They intend on replacing the software with a looping .gif that pretends to scan your computer when you click on the icon in the systray. Thus they will continue to provide the same core functionality* at a fraction of the processor capability

they plan to make it even slower, and encourage users to upgrade their processors!

One of the more sensible posts:

Lots of comments and jokes here about the worth of McAfree ...

And you've got it almost completely wrong. The value of McAfree isn't in their software, its in the fact that it comes preinstalled on a massive amount of computers, it has a subscription model for recurring revenue and LOTS of people use it.

If we're lucky, Intel chipsets, processors and other hardware, such as network cards will be tweaked to McAfee and McAfee tweaked to Intel. Perhaps in the same way that ATI is now AMD and theoretically they are tweaked to one another (are they?).

Hell's bells. Intel with McAfee or AMD with ATI.

Or you can have a MAC. Intel CPU with ATI gfx.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In my opinion it is thoroughly bad news!

The AV software for corporates is universally disliked by most experienced IT techs, the consumer stuff is rubbish.

However McAfee the company is HUGE and does a lot more than just AV software - that is probably what Intel's bought them for.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11025866

Both boards of directors have unanimously approved the deal, but the deal still requires McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory clearances.

Not a fan of McAfee, but does this mean that Intel chipsets will come with ex-McAfee 'add-ons'?

Even considering the point above about mcafee being huge... Why on earth do intel want to bother buying up such a load of old [censored]?

I could perhaps see the point with Symantec, because they do indeed have a lot of fingers in pies, product is equally as carp as mcafee though.

McAfee is utter crepe. They are as tragic as Norton for antivirus or firewall solutions.

I swear by Intel, and always have. I don't see any benefit[s] for the consumer at all.

Bad news IMHO.

In reply to a post by Guest_Again:

Bad news IMHO.

Ditto, firstly because McAfee is carp, but secondly I am not a fan of some of this trusted computing, integrated AV in processor nonsense.... not sure I like where it (potentially) could end up going.

Ignorance speaking, but surely the programmers of the actual software programmers should be addressing these so-called security problems rather than building propitiatory solutions into hardware.

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 19-Aug-10 23:32:40)

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by Guest_Again:

Bad news IMHO.

Ditto, firstly because McAfee is carp, but secondly I am not a fan of some of this trusted computing, integrated AV in processor nonsense.... not sure I like where it (potentially) could end up going.

Ignorance speaking, but surely the programmers of the actual software programmers should be addressing these so-called security problems rather than building propitiatory solutions into hardware.

HERE HERE!