I didn’t realize McAfee was trying to do the same thing but now that I do they have completely lost my trust as well.   I was considering renewing but now a definite NO.

Added to that ever since the renewal notices started being emailed and ‘warning messages’ that my anti-virus subscription was due I reread the emails and found out that there is significant price difference to what they are going to charge me!  One week it is about $129 then its $90.95, then its $96.85, then $83.95 and another one for $64.95 then get this.  They want to charge $181.95 for 2 years!  I’ve also been to the shops and they are discounted to $49 or even free with another purchase.

Hence never get anything automatically renewed since they charge you much more!

The conclusion? I do not trust either company’s anti-virus now – sack the CEO and boards  for bringing these supposed  security companies images down the drain and now acting like spam and insecurity organisations.  I just do not know what they are going to try next to get money off me.

I current have two Apple Mac computers a Vista PC and a bits and pieces PC accumulated over the years which I regularly use.  The bits and pieces PC is the main PC I use for trialling out new software like freebies and operating systems like Linux basically anything that comes on a magazine’s free DVD or something I found on the internet.

However if you’ve been keeping up with this section of the BLOG you’ll know that I now run VMWare Fusion on the Apple Mac’s to create virtual PCs running windows – or any other OS that I need.  The setup has proven it’s self reliable and flexible.  All the software I’ve installed on the virtual PCs work perfectly or specifically as well as they did on a standard box PC.  So I’ve finally decided that the Vista PC, bits and pieces machine, the the very old Mac Mini will be decommissioned.  That’s a job for Ebay…

The caveat is that games don’t run very well or not at all on the virtual PCs purely because my particular Macbook I have does not have a dedicated Graphics card.  Of course this will be fixed when I get a new Mac with a dedicated graphics card.

So I’m  in the market for a new Apple Mac of decent specification so I can run multiple virtual Windows PCs when required. I figure that a 5 year life span and using free and paid software including anti-virus software I can actually save money?  Apple does not offer real discounts on their computers but retailers often have packages but often not compelling enough – nonetheless I shall see.

I’m a supporter of free software – afterall I make free stuff as well but I also support paying for legitimate software.  Basically if you don’t pay for it the companies go broke and you won’t get new stuff.  So I buy software if its better than free offerings.  I always install the trail version first to make sure it will work so should you.

If you sign up with them (Symantec) and pay for a subscription online they assume you will use them forever by not allowing you to delete your details!

When I found out I stopped using them completely.