Now McAfee is under Intel’s control
Articles
Intel acquires McAfee for $7.68 billion – Engadget
My comments
Most of the laptops that I have reviewed on this blog came with a trial edition of a McAfee desktop-security program. Similarly, there are some people who have cottoned on to a McAfee desktop-security solution of some form, either by taking out a full subscription to a trial program that came with their new computer, used a business-supplied program or, for long-time computer hobbyists and students, ran the shareware program on their DOS-based PCs to keep the likes of “Ping Pong” or “Stoned” off their hard disks.
This program, one of the “old dogs” of PC virus control and desktop security, has served many users very well but some users would find that Intel owning McAfee may change the course of the McAfee product lineup either to make it more cheaper or costlier. It could also be a chance to make for a “vertical” desktop-security package directed at a particular user group or, as I would hope for, prepare a competitive antivirus program for the Apple Macintosh platform. This is because as more people take to the Macintosh platform, the “computer underworld” could work on that platform and create malware for it.
A good question to ask is whether McAfee, being profitable, was simply bought out by Intel or whether McAfee was posting a loss and Intel offered to buy out the software company to offset the losses. The latter situation may be brought about by the arrival of the free desktop antivirus programs offered by AVG, Avira, Avast and Microsoft; and the fact that Microsoft is providing a highly-competent desktop firewall program that is baked in to the Windows Vista and 7 operating systems.
Who knows what could be the direction for premium desktop security programs, especially for the Windows platforms.
