bit-tech Shopping: McAfee Total Protection 2008 w/ Site Advisor Plus - 3-User (Full Product)

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

Rating: 2

Time with product:

Strengths: None that I've seen.

Weaknesses: Makes your PC slower than a dinosaur caught in a tar pit and is blind as a bat when it comes to detecting and stopping malware.

Summary: I only used McAfee because it was well-known and offered for free with Comcast's Internet service. Not long after using it, my PC became infected with vicious malware that would open up Internet Explorer against my will on Start Up, and deluge me with all kinds of pop up boxes claiming to offer a product. After repeatedly scanning with McAfee, and it not detecting any infections, I called both Comcast, then McAfee. After having a McAfee agent do a remote scan of my PC and still finding nothing, I was then told I'd have to pay about $30 for level 2 tech support. I told him "No...I'm not paying for something that's already being paid for through my Comcast bill, and is supposed to protect me in the first place.". After repeated East Indian accents of "I'm sorry sir, but...", I terminated the call. I then tried PC Tools Spyware Doctor, which easily found 77 different infections on my PC (the ones that McAfee missed). I took the time to send an email to both Comcast and McAfee of a detailed list of every single one in the hopes McAfee would learn to identify these threats. I never received so much as an automated response or the slightest "thank you" or "we'll look into it" from McAfee. I've since uninstalled McAfee's software and use PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Virus Protection, which I highly recommend. I haven't had any problems since, and Spyware Doctor doesn't slow my PC down either. If you sign up with an internet provider and they offer you free service from McAfee, just say "No."

Rating: 6

Time with product:

Strengths: ok

Weaknesses: may has problems with installation

Summary: I installed McAfee Total Protection 2008 to make a try when boring with bulky Norton Antivirus. I have Spybot Search and Destroy in system and McAfee won't run the installation well until I removed Spybot S&D. You have the option to choose which feature to install which was nice to save some disk. I like Site Advisor Plus which gives lots information on sites. The protection is good so far.

Rating: 2

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: easy to install and use

Weaknesses: uses a lot of memory and slows down computer.Not effective in dealing with adware/malware. Late with sotware updates

Summary: After installation of the McAfee software my computer slowed up significantly. I have also had pproblems with large numbers of different adware/software trojans which were not picked up by McAffee.Information received from them said that they could not deal with Vundo variant at the time.I had to use Superantispyware and Adware 2007 to remove over 120 infections missed by McAfee. It was a bad mistake to change from Norton to McAfee after 10years, I am going back to Norton. I would not recommend this software to anyone

Rating: 6

Time with product: 3 Years

Strengths: Works OK. Probably not as good as Norton but it doesn't have Nortons faults with delaying or stopping computer opertations either. No virus has ever gotten by, in the 3 year I used McAfee.

Weaknesses: Tech support is from India now, used to be the USA or UK so that is not very good now, but OK.

Summary: McAfee rebate vendor is always trying not to pay the rebates. Each time for the last 3 years they have rejected it for some reason that made no sense. But when you make a complaint, they will end up paying it, like they should have in the first place.I like the product and it has a Maintenance section for the computer, called McAfee QuickClean. Will take out the files that you don?t need and clean up the lost file fragments, the registry, cookies and ActiveX files you don?t need, plus others. So that is nice to run once a month.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1 Months

Strengths: It is a all in one protection. Less expensive.

Weaknesses: Since it is a all in one, so there is a problem of the resource usage. It is often causing system slow if you turn on all the features for protection.

Summary: Overall it is not bad. I know it is not the one everyone likes it but for the sake of security it works quite well for protecting your family computers and it is for 3 PCs. Definitely you can turn off some of the features to alleviate the computer load and you should be happy for bothof the protection and computer speed.Anyway, it is a big brand name and you should not need to worry about the security issues on your computers. This is important and this is the reason you get it. If your computer is too old you may have to spend little fortune to upgrade it to get your system speed.