April 12th, 2007
What if car dealerships said "Seat belts? Oh, those'll cost you extra"?
Without namin' names (I've noticed it on so many systems, it's not worth singling out one company), I'm wondering whether the practice of including a limited subscription to an anti-malware (primarily anti-virus) in new computers is a crappy way to treat customers. On several new systems that I've had a chance to check out, I've noticed copies of one security suite or another (Symantec, McAfee, etc.), all of which depend on regular updates from some central online update server to be effective, but all of which only give you those updates for some limited amount of time like 90 days. After that, you have to subscribe to the update service for some amount of money. Personally, I think this stinks. I'd rather my system come with no third party protection at all then one that only works for 3 months, after which point, I have to start paying money to keep it working. Imagine for example if your new car came with seat belts that stopped working after three months and you had to insert your credit card into the dashboard to get them working again.
Why does it work this way? Anti-malware companies pay big money to system manufacturers to have their solutions pre-loaded onto systems so that when people buy those systems, they're predisposed to using whatever solution is on that system. I might actually use that solution if it gave me one or two years of protection. But 90 days? Most ISPs now offer free copies of anti-malware software just to keep their own support costs down (and prevent their infrastructures from being a major source of the Internet's woes should some outbreak bring the Internet to its knees).
Security companies who are pre-loading their software in this way need to realize that the ISPs are their competition. They have to incent me to use their software and not to use the thing that comes to me for free. Giving me only 90 days is zero incentive as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather go to the trouble of removing the software from my system (something that invariably leaves artifacts behind but shouldn't) and loading the stuff I get for free than using the pre-loaded crippleware which is ultimately why I'd rather not have to go through that trouble either. Just give me a clean system and if Symantec or McAfee has paid you to put some crippled version of their software in the box, put the installation files (along with a shortcut to them) on the hard drive instead of the installed version with a quick delete option to get rid of it altogether.
