I spent a large chunk of yesterday and most of this morning trying to install a new subscription to my McAfee antivirus package. I eventually tracked it down, via various help forums and message boards, to a conflict with IE7 and the need to download some extra stuff from Microsoft. I wanted to shout “why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? I’m supposed to be on holiday!” at McAfee. And I don’t even like this new updated version of McAfee; it’s giving me popup messages about all sorts of things I really don’t want or need to know about. So my next little job was to copy some laboriously labelled photos to a CD or two to finish my input on the Loch Sunart project. More shouting at the computer and stomping round the house before I finally decided that my CD writer ist Kaput and I’d have to sort it out on the laptop. How I hate that message “There is no writable CD in the drive”.
Meanwhile revision continues apace -”a” in this context as in abiotic or adiabatic or anoxia. Bribery, blackmail, cajoling, threats, encouragement, peer pressure - does anyone know anything that works? I think May will be more nerve racking than when I did exams myself - at least then I was in control! Roll on June!
My DELL PC came with McAfee anti-virus installed, which I got rid of simply to avoid an annoying marketing message at every startup. Functionally, I’d no complaints - it did the job.
The way I see it, anti-virus software should run in the background and be as discreet as possible. McAfee, on the other hand, thought it would be a good idea to hijack my attention with a marketing splash-screen which popped up every day when the software started. And to offer no opt-out. I developed a whole new affection for Norton without Symantec having to do a thing.
I guess inept marketing will be behind the annoying pop-ups you’re now seeing. They might not contain any information you need, but I bet there are plenty of nice logos to look at.
Mine’s a Dell too, but I was too much of a cheapskate to buy Norton again when the PC came last year with McAfee preinstalled. Not so many popups today - perhaps it was just settling in.