McAfee bug reveals a rift in the Wintel alliance

McAfee bug reveals a rift in the Wintel alliance

THE MCAFEE BUG that caused huge problems for Windows XP systems this week has revealed something deeply embarrassing for the WinTel alliance.

According to the Oregonian newspaper, lots of PCs at Intel were laid low by the bug because it had not listened to the Vole's marketing and upgraded to Vista or Windows 7.

In fact while Intel claims to be at the bleeding edge of hardware technology, registry cleaner it did not think that Vista or Windows 7 were worth the upgrade.

The information is almost as embarrassing to Microsoft as if it came out that Intel was running nothing but Linux boxes.

The Vole has best registry cleaner been telling the world plus dog that they have to upgrade for the sake of Microsoft's profits, er, security.

Microsoft has been pouring scorn on companies that thought the old but stable Windows XP was good enough for business ever since Vista was released. However meanwhile its number one business partner was whistling in the background and occasionally pointing into the horizon saying, "Oh look, an elephant!"

For years Intel's chips have enabled the churn of ever more bloated Microsoft operating systems. As a result punters who have wanted to run the latest Microsoft software have had to buy new, faster computers with Intel chips.

This went really well until Vista arrived late in 2006, full of bugs and incompatibilities. Intel was just one of about 90 per cent of businesses that decided, we will sit this one out.

When Windows 7 arrived last year it was too new to deploy and besides Intel, like many businesses, had cut its budget back to ride out the recession.

It's not as if Intel had tried to hide the fact that it had not upgraded to Vista or Windows 7. However most of the tech press assumed that Intel would have been in the queue on day one. The fact that it wasn't gives the thumbs up to most other outfits that, like Intel, could not see the point in upgrading.