eric’s extremeboredom

(NOTE: This is a rant. This is nothing more than a rant. This post will not change the world. If you have something to do now, go do it instead of reading on. In summary: Mcafee sucks. Mcafee AntiVirus sucks. Windows sucks. Don’t use it. :)

Writing software is always trying to find the balance between simplicity and functionality. Why is it that modern software for Windows seems to sacrifise all functionality for what in my opinion is artificial simplicity?

Today I was at someone’s house trying to fix their Anti Virus software. All of a sudden one day Mcafee just stopped working, popping up errors constantly. Even though the errors clearly stated that the engine failed to load, the “virus scan status” said everything was fine.

Problem Number 1: Over-simplified web-style user interfaces

Guys, seriously. If I want to look at a web page i’ll open my web browser. Stop designing your user interfaces to look like a web page, its completly worthless. I don’t understand why people want to make the web and the client look identical. I think that seporation here is a very good thing and very important – especially for security. Yes, these UIs usually look pretty snazzy, but in the end something that works is what matters… and although many companies seem to have forgotton this – it is possible to write client software that looks good.

Problem Number 2: A lot of windows software can only be installed via an ActiveX-based installer.

I uninstalled the software and proceeded to reinstall it. Since it was purchased online you do not get a CD, you have to install it over the internet. So in Firefox I click the little download link on the mcafee website and am told that I must use internet explorer to install mcafee!

This is just plain insane. First, you have to use internet explorer to install the software, and second, you cannot burn the installer to a CD or anything – you have to have a connection to the internet to run it.

Problem Number 3: Vauge Errors

So frusterated, I load IE and navigate to the website, tell it to install… and it errors!

The error simply said that the installl had failed. It did not say what failed, it did not give any hints as to what failed or why it failed. It simply said that it failed. It gave a few very helpful suggestions to fix the problem which were closing all your programs, restarting the computer, and trying again.

I tried this, and it still did not work. At this point it was getting late and I was getting impatient. I downloaded AVG Free edition which uses the “download and run the installer” that I am used to, and has a very nice easy to understand user interface that just works. It might not be quite as pretty, but as the owners of the computer said to me “As long as it works, protects the computer, and is easy to use I dont care how it looks”. AVG is and does all these things.

My initial impression of AVG was so good it makes me want to buy the pro version, and I probably will recomend that they buy it. When was the last time you could say that about your software?

Categorized as Technology, Software Development, Technology