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Intel Buys McAfee
Several readers have noted that
Intel has agreed to buy McAfee, the computer antivirus software maker, for about $7.7 billion in cash. There is also a press release available if you are into that sort of thing.
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Pretty please? Just give all their victims - I mean customers - their money back and just kill it off already. McAfee has no right even existing.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
That junk is worth $7bn?
Couldn't they have bought something that's actually worth the money?
McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.
You could buy a cross country railroad for that kind of money!
Would you rather do a stock swap and let the people who made mcafee into such a successful enterprise with a strong product portfolio have a say in what intel does?
WTF are they thinking. Granted they're sitting on a pile of cash, but this is silly.
If I were an INTC shareholder I would be pretty pissed off.
If they were looking for something to do with the cash, they should have just paid out a nice dividend.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Intel plans to release a final update to all Mcafee users that will force uninstall the software from their machines, increasing the performance of Intel systems by 300%.
I can see it now 10 years from now, just like Lycos, "McaFee purchased for $7.7 billion in 2010, sold for $200 million in 2015 has just been sold again today for $34 million to some company in Vietnam." Seriously, has anyone personal or enterprise had good experiences with their products?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Good move by Intel. If people become desperate for better per clock cycle performance, they'll favor the new Intel chips over AMD. And what program ropes your computer and drags it down faster than McAfee?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
100% marketing fluff. I really, REALLY want to know what happened under the table, what's still happening under the table, what McAfee has that 15 cheap startups don't, and how this is going to affect Intel hardware in the future.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?
They're gonna add even more bloat, sucking more CPU cycles, forcing people to upgrade, and therefore buy more Intel CPUs.
A list of better things you could do with $7b:
1. Fill a swimming pool with $100 bills and go nuts.
2. Buy several sky scrappers and blow em up, just for shits and giggles.
3. Buy Kaspersky.
4. Nothing. Absoluetly nothing. Ever again.
Any other suggestions?
It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.
As most slashdotters already know, nothing slows your computer down more effectively than Mcafee AV--even if you have the latest and fastest Intel CPU. Optimizing Mcaffe's code would probably add more real horsepower to Intel's processors and be less expensive than designing a new generation of chips.
Intel needs people to think they need these faster multi core CPUs they keep cranking out.
And who is better at slowing Windows down to the point of uselessness then Mcafee?
It's a perfect fit. We'll see you slow, bloated software, then also sell you CPUs to make your computer usable.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Does McAfee offer other products of significant value
They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.
Seems like this is the logical goal. Integrate AV at the hardware level and you should see a significant performance increase, plus tasty vendor lock-in.
Assuming they were classy and used $100 bills (volume: 0.69 cubic inches), it would occupy about 4,427,500 cubic feet. Anyone care to take a swing at the weight? d:
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
mcafee corporate is better then the home ver and has less bolt in it.
"I've got a quarter we can flip to see if this is a good or bad thing."
What's so bad with Intel's drivers? Even though some are outdated (especially for outdated HW) and don't have fancy GUIs doesn't mean it's broken. I've been using Intel's drivers (chipsets, grahics, storage) for 10+ years, didn't have a single problem. Unlike nVidia or ATI where uninstallation doesn't necessary mean the software is completely removed and the drivers keep crashing. And ATI drivers look even uglier than Intel's.
Why does anyone use McAfee? It's crap. In my life I've only ever had two "infections" on my PC... both while McAfee was installed and running. It costs money, and yet free alternatives (like Microsoft Security Essentials) typically rank better in terms of protection. And it constantly causes slow-downs, hangs, and even crashes. It's just utter crap. Why would anyone use it? It should be left to die on the vine.
If you currently use McAfee, you should immediately uninstall it (and top paying for it!) and install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Say good-bye to the bloat and slowness and other complicated crap, as well as the expense.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I was really hoping they'd be buying them out to shut them down.
one can only hope, anyway.
beyond that though, is there really some benefit here or is this just to "make sure it works better on intel" or something?
I didn't imagine security research from mcafee is any better internally than intel just working with them anyway.
It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.
Nah, Intel actually bought HP - McAfee just came bundled.
Although it's a CPU hog, that doesn't matter much because [last I looked at it] the scanning process is single-threaded and every CPU has at least two cores nowadays.
:)
The main performance drag is its never-ending HDD thrashing. Constant random reads are murderous for HDDs.
Of course, Intel also make SSDs, which don't suffer quite so much from that.
Wow, I'm really surprised at this announcement and that Slashdot still has my account on profile. Good jobs on keeping that database!!!
But seriously folks. Bashing McAfee? Are you ignorant to exactly what McAfee is? The largest AV player in the Government/Military sector. They have very large banks as customers too. But, I know it is more fun to joke about their AV performance, which is in fact on par with most AV products.
So let me get to the business of trying to decide what this means? It is without a doubt a huge plus for Intel. They have entered into SaaS/cloud email arena with MxLogic, now have a viable FW in the Sidewinder. Can be knocking on checkpoint's gate with a EndPoint Encryption product, is the DLP solution going to rival RSA? Intel gains other network based tools such as IPS/IDS (reconnex), Network Behavioral Analysis, Foundstone, etc.
I say the deal doesn't go through. At least, getting this past federal regulators will be quite an interesting test.
"Work" is not a stressor. It is the "perception" of work that is the stressor.
Why in the name of timecube are you running Oracle on an architecture that McAfee can even run on?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Units off by at least 1 Library of Congress ...
0.068 Cubic Inches x 77000000 pieces = 5236000 Cubic Inches = 3030 cubic feet.
Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.
But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When used in financial situations it means money instead of thing like stock, corporate bonds, land, etc.
You will usually see thing like company purchased for $1billion in cash and $2billion stock.
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.
The fact that their flagship product is a pile of crap is irrelevant because people buy it anyway, without hesitation.
McAfee Antivirus might suck and be next to worthless, but McAfee the company is worth a lot of money because people are too ignorant to get the first part.
Second, as far as system slow down, and this one hurts as I hate defending such shitty products ... but ...
ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE. They open and scan every file (EVERY file, not just exe and dlls) before passing the result along to the actual program.
There is no way around this, the data must be check before it can be used in order to be safe. Well, no matter how fast you right code, it takes a while to scan all the files that go into making even a simple program run. There are thousands of files that get openned when an app like Firefox for Photoshop starts running, and all of those files get read into memory and checked ... BEFORE they are passed along to the app calling them. Unless you invent time bending or something, this will always end up taking a very noticeable amount of time, making your computer seem slow.
Want your computer with McAfee to not run slow? Turn off on-demand scanning. Want a middle ground? Change the on-demand settings to be less agressive, but its probably not going to make much difference since the speed issue is mostly opening and reading the files in the first place.
You won't find anyone with an on-demand scanner that doesn't have these problems.
You also won't find an anti-virus company worth more other than symantec.
So yes, this was a good deal for Intel, even if most of slashdot is too blind to see the logic in the move.
I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Oh come on, no more McAfee, and Norton will just step into their shoes.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
20 years ago when I got my first modem (wow it's been that long, I feel old) McAfee was *the* virus scanner. Sysops used it to scan uploads and users used it to scan downloads. Of course back then it was a small command line app that fit on one floppy and ran in 256KB (yes, K) of memory, not the massive piece of bloatware it is now. It was also free... paid versions didn't appear until Windows took over IIRC.
Never would have guessed that they woulda end up developing into a software giant worth $7.7B. And sold to Intel of all companies.
Heard a guy on the business channel speculating that Intel might be wanting it to develop on-chip virus scanners. Sounds like a promising application if it'll speed it up. As it is now scanners as no faster now as it was 20 years ago, but back then we only had 30MB drives to scan so it ran a full scan in under 30 seconds. Now we have 300GB or more and it takes about 3 hours... no wonder people hate virus scanners.
Instead of giving Dell cash to stay away from AMD (which is frowned upon), they will give away McAfee licenses. It's that simple.
1) Buy the worst performing AV on planet ever
2) Hand it out for free or some cheap price
3) Let them NEED your CPU upgrades!
4) Profit!!!
Anti-virus imbedded into CPU functionality? I'm sure they won't include all the extra crap that causes the "CPU bloat" but the underlying antivirus technology alone could be embedded into the CPU to protect against viruses.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Exactly. Cash, in this case, is compared to a stock swap or borrowed money. It just means that they paid out of pocket with their own real money. Ridiculously large stock swaps for acquisitions are normal when a stock is overvalued... it's difficult to "sell high" without falling afoul of insider trading rules, or killing the value of your stock. Stock-based acquisitions are one way to take advantage of the periods when your stock is overvalued. Paying with real money, on the other hand, usually means people are more serious about the valuation of the acquisition.
The ______ Agenda
"Cash" is a term that indicates that real money is changing hands (as opposed to stock). It does not imply physical currency, it can be a bank transfer or check (or in this case, probably many checks to individual stockholders). This is a very common usage in English, and I would not consider it a mistake in the summary.
But it's only a trial version. After 60 days Intel will have to pay again to keep McAfee for a year.
If I still had mod points, I would mod parent up. When I heard about this my first though was about the addition of processor extensions to boost virtualization performance. I could definitely see Intel adding some new antivirus extensions to their CPUs.
As an illustration consider the phrase 'to cash a check'.
I've heard a plain deposit called "put the check in the bank"; it's only "cashing" when the person making the deposit asks for currency back. But then my Walmart* Discover Card's "Cashback Bonus" does come in the form of $10 checks attached to the credit card bill.
If remember the McAfee bug from a few months back, Intel was hit by this bug and shutdown their network. Maybe Intel is forking over the cash to fire whoever screwed up at McAfee and caused this problem.
Its not what it is, its something else.
I don't think either would be a wise choice if you're looking for a swift anything.
ftp.mcafee.com
licensed
321.
That right there made them more popular than they ever should have been. "everybody had that login"
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
I guess I've never used McAfee from a home end user perspective, but from a corporate perspective it is a pretty solid product. The client-side agents are extremely resilient, you could have a box powered off for a year tucked away in some dark corner of the office, fire it back up, and it would check in and update just fine -- that is hugely important. Yeah, [full] system scans eat up a lot of CPU, thats why you effectively set your policies (which are pretty damn granular) to scan at certain times, disregard certain file types, etc... so that it doesn't impact the business. Schedule full system scans during the week ends and during scheduled maintenance windows. On-Access scanning is enabled, and I'll admit you can see it chews up a decent amount of proc for compressed file types. But I feel McAfee (again,from a corporate perspective) delivers a pretty nice suite of products. From my experience, the only thing that is a bit lacking (which is seemingly because it's in its infancy stages) is the Endpoint Encryption. Integration with fingerprint readers is somewhat lacking, many common biometric co-processor models are not yet supported, also, even if they are supported, managing the tokens and linking them to user accounts on the server-side is pretty manual. It's a bit silly... but they are making progress in that area.
Either way, there's no denying that McAfee is a major player in the AV scene... and since Intel already damn near has the market cornered on CPU/Motherboards/etc... Imagine how much integration can be done at the hardware level between AV/provisioning/inventory/imaging/etc using TPM/IAMT. I don't see how any of this is a bad thing.
Home computing is not the bigger market here.
...wouldn't you want antivirus software that doesn't suck big sweaty donkey testes? I mean, if you're going to embed it in your CPU and make it all permanent, shouldn't it be important to choose decent antivirus software?
I figure they'll "optimize" it for Intel (read: "detect AMD chips and add delay loops when they find them") then use it as a benchmark in the sort of magazines that pointy haired bosses read.
No sig today...