Who Owns this Computer?

I have noticed that I no longer am the entity in charge of my computer. My computer’s boss vacillates between my protection program – McAfee on this computer – and Microsoft. I am way down on the list of “who is in charge.” I’m finding it more and more annoying.

The protection is more of a problem than the threats ever have been. I had Symantec on my desktop computer and it took so long to start up and make sure that everything was okay that by the time I could use the dumb thing my coffee was cold. I hated the wait. Especially when the dumb computer had already been started once that day and I was rebooting because of some other hanging trouble.

So when I got a new laptop, I installed McAfee. It came with preinstalled Office, which is nice, but it was a trial version and I own the real thing. OneNote was included in the trial, but I have no use for one or even two notes. I am not a business. I just want a word processing program. I don’t know what OneNote would have done to impress me because I never used it.

However, when I downloaded Office updates, it downloaded something for OneNote that means that I can spin in circles and whistle Dixie while speaking five foreign languages to create a work around. Or I can never update my Office again. Guess which I will choose. And I’m fairly computer literate. I wonder what people who aren’t even as knowledgable as me would do.

I am on several mailing lists. Each list has had trouble with bouncing mail in one form or another. The spam filters seems to have no problem allowing for advertisements for enlarged male genitalia to get through, but mail that I might want is a risk. I have gotten several mailings from a bank I don’t use that has a suspicious link attached. But stuff I ask for is dangerous.

It has gotten to the point that there is so much protecting me going on that I can barely use my computer. Perhaps that is why it is safe – it’s a paperweight.

After I purchased McAfee, I found out that ad blocking doesn’t work for Netscape or Firefox because they don’t include Active X. McAfee assures me that they are not owned by Microsoft, but their program only works with Internet Explorer and if you want to use another brand, well, you just wasted your money. But I prefer the tabbed browsing. So IE has a newer browser out that uses tabbed browsing. Great. McAfee doesn’t work with that either, and now I have no idea why and thank God I can still get the annoying ads flickering.

I have been using Webshots for about six years now. I was downloading pictures when they were all free. And only in one format. But now that I am being protected after six years of use, I have to click in three places to download each and every picture because the new and improved tabbed IE thinks that it an evil site. I have tried several different methods to get IE off my back and let it know that this is my computer and I download at least two new pictures every day and I have been doing it for years on several different computers, none of which ever had a problem, and I want to continue to use my computer the way that the person who paid for it chooses. IE laughs maniacally and lets me know it is for my own good. I can’t use my own computer the way I want to use it. Other people know better.

All the protection is doing is making me have a harder time using the computer I bought for specific purposes. I don’t feel helped. I am about to turn off all protection devices. I’m sick of not being able to use my machine. I tried to turn off the security inside IE, but it won’t let me. Bill is my friend and he is here to help.