What does McAfee's Failure Show Us!

As most of you know and many of you may have experienced McAfee made a major mistake a few days ago. Somehow they managed to release an updated virus file that identified a major systems file in XP as a virus and then removed or quarantined it. That resulted in a computer that constantly rebooted itself endlessly without success.

So what are we to learn from this experience. Just the simple fact that most companies today only give lip service to quality control. There just isn't any other way to describe this error but as unforgivable. When one of the biggest "Security" companies fails to check out an update on what is the largest user based OS in America it's not something that can be overlooked. To think that a company that's specialty is security could be responsible for causing more trouble than any virus, malware, or Trojan has caused so far this year just defies belief.

But the real story goes beyond McAfee and strikes at the hart of a much bigger problem. Currently we have far to many companies both big and small in every sector of our economy that are constantly failing to provide or produce products that are anything but junk. It's a sad statement on our pride, competence, and workmanship that so may of our products fail and do so at such an alarming rate.

We see this trend every day in everything from our cars and our baby furniture to our medical equipment. This trend needs to stop and the only way it can happen is for everyone to take a stand and refuse to allow those who fail to produce quality products to get away with it.

So I've taken a new hard stand against such sorry performance. I return products and write the companies involved when I get something substandard. That includes dropping McAfee as one of the companies I deal with. And I won't be using their products again until they can convince me that I'll not be spending the better part of a day trying to resolve computer problems caused by their incompetence. I have no idea how much it cost me in time and trouble to clean up the mess they made of several of my clients computer systems but it was substantial. Systems that they needed to perform their businesses and provide the services and merchandise their customers require were reduced to uselessness. And of course like all software companies McAfee gets off scott free of liability due to their software licensing agreement.

But if we all take them to task and drop their software from our systems we can still see that they get the message. A message that hopefully will tell companies that "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

So join me in striking out against poor products and substandard workmanship. Drop McAfee and replace their "Security" suite and products with others that can do the job.

To help you do just this I will be doing a series of articles starting tomorrow that will discuss some of the security products that are available (many free for personal use) that have show that they can perform and perform correctly. Remember we can succeed if we stick together or hang separately if we don't.