Hacker News Reader

Comment by nevi-me | Hacker News Reader

My work company (global company with offices in every region) uses them. An oldish version of the thing, likely mandated by head office in the US (I'm in Africa).

The antivirus routinely uses 100% of the CPU for hours in a day. Our machines are so locked down with other products, one would wonder if the McAfee stuff is even useful.

I have tinnitus because of laptop fans at work. A few of us who question IT practises are convinced that there must be something shady going on, as there are many better alternative. Heck, the default Microsoft option is good enough these days.

View on HN

> I have tinnitus because of laptop fans at work.

This seems unlikely, but on the off chance - ear plugs or concert ear plugs[0]? Concert earplugs ideally attenuate without changing the sound (not realistic, i know). Or a really good set of active noise cancelling headphones, in-ear monitors?

I do question the laptop fans being the root cause of tinnitus since there'd have to be so so many... are you in a server room of laptops running at full strength?

Regardless, protect your hearing!

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-earplugs-for...

I'll try what you're suggesting.

To give you a feel, one evening in the office when I turned off my laptop; colleagues stood up and asked what loud noise just turned off.

From that day, we noticed that our laptops were loud because of the fans. Sometimes the noise blends in because of AC and generally noise office. But the pitch is very high, and it's because CPU @ 60+ because the McAfee web control thing is running even though one has no browser open.

IT haven't been helpful, to the point where against compliance, a few of us being our own laptops to work, and use company ones here and there

This kind of noise on a laptop isn't normal. You may benefit from disassembling the laptop, removing any dust you find and reapplying thermal paste on the CPU.

There are countless tutorial on YT, even if you don't find your specific laptop model it will be close enough.

I'm pretty sure that any company that mandates Mcafee will not look kindly to their employees disassembling laptops either.

Silly compliance checkbox perhaps? I'm vaguely aware that certain PCI standards require organizations to install anti-virus software with specific requirements.

Windows Defender checks that box other than hogging the CPU.

I've had the same experience of Mcafee - it makes you wonder how much their loathsome AV is contributing towards the company's power bill, and indeed global warming!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com