| OVERVIEW: • Installation time of 2 minutes. • Includes a Firewall and other useful system tools. • Good Effectiveness against Viruses. • Slow Virus Scanner, plus Updates are infrequent. • Below average Performance - quite slow on several tests. • Overall Rating: Fair  |
McAfee is one of the big names in the Antivirus industry. How does it compare to the competition? Read our McAfee Review below to find out...
1) Installation:
McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009 installed quickly in just under 2 minutes
2) Features & Ease of Use: McAfee is the only Antivirus program that we tested that includes a fully functioning Firewall in its base Antivirus program. Some Antivirus programs include a one-way Firewall, but McAfee takes this a step further including McAfee Personal Firewall with their VirusScan software. McAfee VirusScan's user-interface has both a Basic Menu and an Advanced Menu. The Basic Menu is very concise and user-friendly - giving quick access to all the important components in a well laid-out user-interface. The Advanced Menu gives users access to other features like McAfee QuickClean, Disk Defragmenter, and access to program Logs. McAfee has many additional features not seen in most other basic Antivirus programs - which is why they probably refer to it as VirusScan "Plus". In addition to Virus Protection and a Firewall program, McAfee VirusScan also has Spyware Protection, and McAfee's own unique SiteAdvisor - which quickly rates the safety of websites before you click on them (green, yellow or red colors). Overall, an impressive set of features, although some of these extra features definitely had an impact on McAfee's Performance which was below average in our testing - see 3b) for more details. 3) PERFORMANCE 3a) Virus Scanner:  McAfee VirusScan has 3 scanning options: Quick Scan, Full Scan, and Custom Scan. McAfee is one of the slowest scanning programs we tested, taking almost 84 minutes to scan our test computer's 70 GB of used hard-drive space. McAfee took about double as long to scan our test computer than the top 2 antivirus programs - Avast Antivirus and Kaspersky Antivirus. Updates: McAfee updated on average only 1.2 times per day - this was the 2nd least updates per day that we tested. By Comparison, Norton Antivirus updated itself over 200 times per day. Quite a significant difference! 3b) System Resource Usage: McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009 didn't fair well in our Antivirus testing - considering its one of the big names in the Antivirus industry we were expecting it to perform better than it did. View the results of the Antivirus tests we performed below...
3c) Effectiveness: 
4) Help & Support: McAfee offers Email, Chat, an Online FAQ section, a Virtual Technician, as well as paid Phone support options. McAfee's Virtual Technician is a program that diagnoses and attempts to automatically fix any problems it finds with your McAfee software. The FAQ Section is extensive and offers several Video Tutorials for common problems. McAfee's Email support took 15 hours to receive a reply - which was the longest of any Antivirus company we reviewed this year. Our main problem with McAfee's support system is that they try to push you towards their paid support services too often - almost all Phone support is fee-based (except for billing questions), and all Virus Removal support is fee-based. CONCLUSION: McAfee has all the qualities of a good Antivirus program - easy to use, good set of features, and it's effective against Viruses & other Malware. The only drawback is that it's teetering on being considered slow when compared to its competition. The Virus Scanner is the 2nd-slowest we tested, and its Updates were also 2nd-slowest. Our testing also found that it was one of the worst in impacting your computer's speed - especially in our tests of Memory Use, Reboot Time, Installation Size, and Application Launch Time - which McAfee placed near the bottom of. McAfee is a good Antivirus program, but its large impact on system performance makes it a questionable pick. Norton Antivirus and NOD32 Antivirus may make better alternative Antivirus programs due to their much better performance.
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McAfee Software Description:
McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009 takes the worry and hassle out of PC protection for everyone — from experts to novices, shielding PCs from Viruses, Spyware, and includes a Firewall to protect you against hacker attacks. It also features award-winning, easy-to-use McAfee SiteAdvisor® - an online safety guide that warns you about risky web sites before you visit.McAfee VirusScan Plus is now available with revolutionary Active Protection technology, providing immediate protection against malicious threats to your PC. A new threat can be analyzed and blocked in milliseconds, rather than waiting hours for traditional techniques. Active Protection is the best technology to keep you safe from emerging online threats.
With unmatched performance, MacAfee Virus Scan Plus runs silently in the background without slowing down your PC - now boasting faster start-up, shut-down and scan times.
McAfee’s security products use award-winning technology, are easy to install, and come with unlimited email and chat assistance. With continuous and automatic updates, McAffee ensures that you’re running the most current security to combat the ever-evolving threats on the Internet for the duration of your subscription.
An Internet connection is required to install this software and to receive automatic updates and upgrades to keep your security up-to-date. McAfee VirusScan is available for one computer license or for multiple licenses.
