Doris uninstalls McAfee and gets an instant system speed boost
Thank you for all your help. I have had McAfee virus and firewall for years and lately have been having problems. My memory on the computer was almost gone on my computer. Today I removed all McAfee things and installed Avast. What I found was unbelievable. Also my memory went from 17% to 38% free. What is the deal, do you know?
Our Answer
Hey! Thanks, Doris. To answer your question we’re going to take you behind the scenes into a big anti-virus developer’s Research & Development laboratory. Fictional, of course (hehe!).
Programmer: “You know, if we added a firewall to our anti-virus we could make more money.”
Marketing Director: (cupping his ears) “I’m all ears!”
Programmer: “We’re already socking these suckers, er, I mean customers $29.00 a year for the AV. If we added a firewall, you guys could get $39 a year!”
Marketing Director: “Cool! Could you add anti-sp*am, anti-spyware, and anti-trojan to it, too?”
Programmer: “Sure, but whoever uses that kind of monstrosity is going to need a darn super-computer to run it, ‘cos it’s gonna take up gobs of memory!’
Marketing Director: “Memory! Smemory! We could get $59 maybe $69 a year for something like that!
Programmer: “But, when the schmucks install this it’s gonna make their computers run like a crippled tortoise through a cranberry bog!”
Marketing Director: “Who cares? $69.00 a year! Darn good money. Those schmucks won’t blame our software for their computer running like a piece of junk. They’ll blame something else! We got a big name in the anti-virus industry! We’re McCrappie Anti-Virus. We’re darn near a household name!”
Programmer: “OK, I’ll add all those features. What do you think about anti-phishing and anti-anti too?”
Marketing Director: “Great idea! (Laughing) That sounds like $79.00 a year to me. By-the-way, what’s anti-anti?”
Programmer: “I don’t know, but I’ll make it do something. Maybe it will just shut-down the computer at random and flash some kind of warning like ‘McCrappie Is Cutting You Off Now – You’ve Been Using Your Computer Too Long! Go Read A Book’.”
Marketing Director: “I love it! Put that in there! $79.00 a year! Wait until I tell the Board about this! They’ll be ecstatic. How long will it take you to put all this stuff in there?”
Programmer: “Oh, couple days or so. I can even add a virtual can opener if you want!”
Marketing Director: “Cool!” Love the can opener idea. That’ll get ’em. When you get it done, let me know, and I’ll invite you up to my lavish offices for some caviar and Pouilly Fuisse – it’s on the company!”
Programmer: “Cool!” See ya in a couple days then! Oh, and by-the-way, I like my Pouilly Fuisse extra-chilled!
Our fictional company aside, McAfee and Norton at one time were the only two developers of anti-virus software. And, frankly at the time they were the only two, there weren’t a whole lot of viruses floating around out there. There were a few and they were pretty bad. McAfee and Norton (and this breaks my heart to say this) had really good reputations then – and they became the paragons of the anti-virus world (naturally -because they WERE the anti-virus world).
But, as Bob Dylan would say – “the times, they are a changin’.” More and more kooks started writing more and more viruses and eventually email worms, and other anti-virus companies sprung up hoping to share some of the money being generated by the emerging virus and worm scares. McAfee and Norton, like the Proud Mary, keep on rollin’ and the smaller companies, mostly unknowns, carved out niches for themselves. But, still today, Norton and McAfee, are still ridin’ high on their fame of the past and still remain, to this day, the number 1 and number 2 (respectively) anti-virus companies in the world (although Norton is now own by Symantec – and Symantec is another story altogether -trust me you don’t want me to go into that now!).
So what you have with Norton and McAfee are Internet Security Suites with one “feature” layered upon another upon another – and both consuming so much of a computer’s resources that most computers function noticeably slower with either of them installed.
Now the tremendous appetite that these two ponderous programs have for computer memory is legendary, but recently it has come to our attention that not only are these programs hard on your computer resources, they’re beginning to get hard on the person using the computer. By preventing the user from performing normal tasks without undue hassles and making the user navigate a virtual labyrinth of confusing configuration settings in order to customize the software (settings that no one but an underfed geek who has not seen the sun since 1989 could understand) these programs make can make using a computer even more of a challenge than it needs to be.
So we say, let them rest in peace. They were good in their day. But it’s not their day. They’re old, tired, bloated warhorses now, it’s time to put them out to pasture. They can cause a myriad of problems. They don’t provably provide any better protection than many free or less-expensive alternatives. And, worst of all, they use up huge amounts of computer memory which in turn cause its own set of problems: like causing programs to freeze when you try to open them; slow computer performance; and sometimes providing for a very frustrating and annoying computer experience. Who needs that?
So we say: “Why would you pay $59, $69, or $79 a year to make your computer to run like a fat dinosaur (excuse me – I meant a “Big Beautiful Dinosaur or BBD”)? Most of us can make our computers run poorly all by ourselves without being charged all that money. And if you really want to make your computer run bad, lots of malware and installation bundler developers will give you things free that will help you out.
There are many good free anti-virus programs out there. We recommend MSE. It’s free and will protect your computer without bloat and without bogging down your system. There are other free anti-viruses which are much better than Norton and McAfee.
And, I think, even better than my long-winded but hopefully educational pontification was your statement: “Today I removed all McAfee things and installed Avast. What I found was unbelievable. Also my memory went from 17% to 38% free.” Indeed! You said it all right there!
EB? Are you a BBD?
Hey TC,
Are you pickin’ on EB, still– or AGAIN?? 🙂
Thank you. Beautifully written, enjoyed reading this, and congratulations to Doris for seeing her problem and beating it. I am a MSE user too, thanks to your sound advice.
Barb.
I have had both of those, Nortons, and McAfee… but when you uninstall ’em, they leave behind some junk and no matter how many times, you try and get it out of your system, it’s still there. You must go to their site and get their tool to remove it.
I thought I had got rid of McAfee & Norton and have been using Avast as you folks had been recommending in the past. I was wasn’t until Darcy came to my site and provided her expertise that we found we still had some Norton hiding in the bushes. I can truthfully say that we are now totally clear of Norton. Thanks to Darcy and your Cloudeight Direct Computer Service. I would highly recommend it folks. Well worth the small cost.
Arnie Brown– Nova Scotia
Interesting! my PC sort of lost all its anti-virus stuff, so had to add one on .I used AVG. It certainly is not running faster (better, but not faster). Would you suggest I change to MSE? Does it do the same thing? Thanks
AVG has sort of become the new mini-Norton — it’s a very bloated and invasive program with its toolbars, etc. Yes we recommend MSE over AVG.