bit-tech Shopping: McAfee VirusScanPlus 2008 (Full Product)

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows XP

Rating: 8

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: Great price, reliable, good customer service

Weaknesses: None

Summary: My experience with VirusScan Plus has been good so far. I had a little trouble installing it and had to contact online customer support, they solved it quickly. Now it's working like a charm.

Rating: 6

Time with product: 37 Days

Strengths: fast, pretty good performance

Weaknesses: not complete protection

Summary: This software doesn't occupy too much resources, but it can still protect your system in pretty good ways. Compared with McAfee internet security, it is more fast but with comparable security functions. A good product to own.

Rating: 4

Time with product: 40 Days

Strengths: resource efficiency

Weaknesses: not so powerful

Summary: It is a very simple software with simple functions. If you only use this to protect your system it seems not enough; however, it has the most important functions to protect your system. With cheap price, it is not a bad choice.

Rating: 2

Time with product: 1 Month

Strengths: None that I could see compared to competitors out there.

Weaknesses: 1. Makes the PC slow.2. Difficult to judge what it is doing, why, or how to control its actions.3. Difficult to uninstall

Summary: I bought this to mainly upgrade outdated antivirus and was taken aback by several issues.The install was fine but then I started to notice that my previous norton was not fully uninstalled and was also running - so I had to wade through several websites and google to figure how to completely delete the old stuff.The first thing I noticed after the new McAfee install was the startup time of PC was considerably slower - I tried to look into several places including registry for startup to see what was taking the time but simply could not and found from google that this was universally true for not only McAfee but all later versions of anti-virus software.Basically it looks like these anti-virus software have grown into huge monsters which are starting to control the rest of the pc in the name of security to the point of hindering the pc.Once the system started I faced several issues with software that was already working - from chat programs to vpn and so decided to uninstall this mcafee and see what happens and there also I got into problems on how to completely uninstall mcafee and had to see various google sites to get back to stable state. Once it was fully removed my system performance was back to better statebut I was left without antivirus - so I installed the free and basic windows defender and that seems to suffice for me so far.I did not call their tech support as I felt a simple software such as this was way out of line if it cannot do simple stuff it is meant to do.It is a shame that anti-virus software should reach a state where break the system more than the virus themselves!It is probably not worth to pay for these anymore until the anti-virus makers start to get a grip to not hinder the system with their software.

Rating: 6

Time with product: 60

Strengths: None compared to other AVs I've used.

Weaknesses: Slows my machine way down too much. McAfee always has been a resource hog.

Summary: It's not easy to clean it off your machine so I used a 3rd party uninstaller which seemed to help. I'm using a different AV now and I'm able to play games again and surf the web a lot faster.