I h8 McAfe

We just recently migrated to the latest McAfee Enterprise software solution for my organization, on recommendation of the internal auditors.  His recommendation convinced me as I was not in the mood for another run of Symantec’s thriller, ver11.  I thought I’ll save myself the “frustration” I went throught with Symantec.  

Excitingly, I have recieved my McAfee pakage.  At first I was amazed by not recieving a printed manual and thought; ooh, so this is so trouble free, a printed manual isn’t even necessary.  I’ll look at the electronic documents.

HOW WRONG WAS I.   There is probably not a printed manual because McAfee developers probably is still busy figuring out how their own product works!  And forget trying to get any info from the CD’s.  Apart from the directory structure which follows no logical order, there isn’t any useful info.

OK, so I thought I’ll google.  Nope, not much help, except a one pager of “so, you’ve got your license. What now”.  I think one of the sales persons wrote that one pager as it sells more than it helps.  Actually, it was so uselsess they could’ve just told me: “now, put the cd in the cd-rom and let’s see what happens“.  

OK, so I thought, let’s phone the distributor.  What a shock.  They told me to NOT install the product with the default settings as that will crash your entire network.  O, and just by the way, you would need a authorized/certified McAfee installer to come and install it for you as it takes about a day to install the package.  A DAY?!?  I’ve just bought the package at a considerable amount; now you’re telling me you need a “doctors degree” to install it.  How difficult can it be?  And how is it that the default is the least recommended?  Now I need to pay consultance of pretty much the same the product cost me in the first place.  ”But sir, you’re welcome to install the agent manually on every pc in your organization.”  Then why did I buy the enterprise solution?  Why would I want to walk from pc to pc if even MS can give me GPO’s to do installations.  Are we back in the stone-age or what? Oh, did I say there is only 1 team of authorized/certified consultants in the country and they are hundreds of km’s away – more costs!  And by the way, don’t think of giving it back – the license is paid; nobody else wants the freakin product.

OK, so I thought, let’s make the international call to McAfee support.  Firstly I can’t even hear what they say; not sure which dialect they’re talking.  Was wondering whether they also outsourced their help desk, like some others to people who’s acent and dialect are so uneasy on the ear that…  Wait, I’m off the point.  In short, they referred me to the manual.  WHAT MANUAL.  OK, then the supplier.  I WAS THERE.  Okayye, try and run setup.exe (no waayy!) and let us know if you have any further problems. THANKS FOR NOTHING.

Now I know why they call their enterprise product the ePolicy Orchestrator – because all the help you’re getting is just bunch of cacofonic sounds in your ear.  Funny though, nothing is orchestrated!

Conclusion: If I can pay someone to take this, I would!  I’ll even go for Symantec’s ver 11, despite the blogs referred to below.  At least I went through the learning curve!  At least there is more help and support.

Sym:

• symantec sucks
• i hate symantec
• why does everyone hate symantec?
• i hate symantec too
• etc.

 

McAfee

• why i hate mc
• i hate mc
• how do i get it out?
• hate in d minor
• ooo, and don’t try to uninstall!
• and more
• rate it!
• slow

and if you hate both?

please help!  I’ll blogger-off.

~ by ekkedink on Saturday, 9 May 2009.