Customer Reviews

McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 [Old Version]

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(55)

 

 

I was a McAfee customer of several years. The program is a resource hog and bogged down my system. Contact with the company to resolve the issue was futile. Technical support referred me to customer service. Customer service referred me to technical support. Neither one could help and McAfee refused to refund my money. Do NOT buy this program! It is worse than a waste of money, it's a waste of money AND an unneeded aggravation. Stick with a better program like BitDefender.

The first unpleasant surprise was that McAfee Internet Security Suite blocked several web pages which I absolutely wanted to open. I tried to make the program understand that those web pages were OK and I wanted to visit them. Well, I couldn't find a way of doing that. I also discovered that web browsing had gotten much slower than usual. Then I wanted to disable popup blocking. I opened the appropriate menu in McAfee Internet Security Suite and disabled popup blocking. However, I noticed that the popups were still being blocked. I opened McAfee Internet Security Suite again to make sure I hadn't made a mistake. No, I hadn't, McAfee Internet Security Suite told me that popup blocking was disabled. In spite of that, the popups were being blocked. I could not find the way to make McAfee Internet Security Suite allow popups. Finally, I discovered that it was impossible to close McAfee Internet Security Suite. The program itself didn't allow such elementary operation as "close" (or at least I couldn't find it) and even Task Manager wouldn't close the processes. The only way to close McAfee Internet Security Suite was by uninstalling it, which I did.
These are just the two biggest complaints I have about this program. I won't bother you with the rest. To make the long story short, in order to avoid viruses and spyware taking control of my computer and slowing it down, I ended up installing McAfee Internet Security Suite which took control of my computer and slowed it down.
Now, the company promised me by email a 30-day money back guarantee. So I wrote to them asking for a refund. My email came back with an error message. Then, I tried to find another email address on their website. It turned out home users could only reach the company by telephone. I didn't, however, want to call them, as I have difficulties understanding British accent, and besides, why do I have to call in the first place? It is reasonable to expect that it be possible to reach a software vendor by email. Anyway, as the last resort, I browsed through a maze of help pages hoping to finally reach some kind of a contact form. It was hopeless. So I wrote to an address on the company's website that was intended for corporate customers, as that was the closest I could find. I told them politely that I knew that it wasn't the correct address, but as they were working in the same company, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to forward my message to the right people. I was hoping that the different departments of McAfee were communicating with each other. It turned out I was wrong. I got a reply which was polite but which's essential content was: beat it, this is not my responsibility area.
So I would like to warn you that if you buy this product, don't expect to get any help from the vendor, as it's not even possible to contact them by email. I am continuing my attempts to make McAfee keep its word. Wish me luck.

Much worse than previous McAfee editions.

I dropped Norton on some older desktops due to its lack of support for W2000. I then went to the free edition of AVG anti-virus, which was OK but slowed things down. Thinking "you get what you pay for" I sprung for McAfee which has been OK in the past. The edition I purchased has 3 licenses. I installed one of these on my wife's XP laptop as well as one of my desktops (luckily, she's still talking to me).

The 2007 McAfee Suite makes AVG look like a free Ferrari. Absolutely terrible performance, coupled with a mediocre interface. Perhaps the only poorer-performing way to assure you'll never get a virus, spam, etc. would be to hit your motherboard with a hammer.

This will slow down your computer (even worse, unpredictably). If you have lots of email in Outlook or Outlook Express expect to open your mail box, then have a long break before you can do a thing (as it rechecks everything for spam). There's a partial workaround for this, but users shouldn't have to search for workarounds. Every Web action now has noticeable latency -- as well as slower applications when McAfee is grinding away in the background. If you liked your current anti-spam, kiss it goodbye -- McAfee may not let you keep it. McAfee (like Norton) is also difficult to remove from your system. What prompted this review? Today it appears the update process rebooted my computer without requiring a "yes" from me.

As for alternatives, I wasn't able to get Kaspersky anti-virus to run on an older machine -- somewhare a remnant of Norton persisted (possibly a document tagged Symantec etc. left over from a day of working with them ages ago). However, I did get it running on a laptop and its better than Norton-McAfee-and even AVG in my opinion.

So, consider Kaspersky or another vendor. If that doesn't work try AVG.

It will be interesting to see how McAfee responds -- they've really shot themselves in the foot with this release.

Here's an update -- and why McAfee should get a NEGATIVE FIVE. In uninstalling McAffee, it basically trashed my registry. This won't happen to everyone, but it is apparently a common problem with folks with lots of installed software. Hours of manually trying to rebuild it, based on McAfee and others' instructions, didn't work. The only way out was a complete reinstall of Windows and all my programs and all my data. That's the same worst-case outcome of the worst virus you''re likely to get. I've bought two copies of Kaspersky and so far, so good. However, my next computer will be a Mac Pro with Parallels. It's an interesting world, where McAfee can cause Microsoft to lose future business.

I have used McAfee for at least 5 years. This 2007 Suite is a piece of trash. I takes soooooo long to find a site that IF it eventually finds it you forget what you were looking for. At half the sites, if they are found, it will not allow me to progress into the site. In setting it up it insisted upon registering but never did tell me if the registration was completed; just kept blinking. I assume it was registered because it did update. I cannot get into half the sites I visit on a regular basis. It won't even find the McAfee site. Just sits there searching until it gives me a notice it can't find the site. Never will I buy another piece of software from McAfee. I should have read the reviews before I bought it but I had been satisfed with the previous version so I never bothered reading them. Dumb move on my part. Dumb one on yours if you buy it. Never again.

As everyone else has said, this product is not at all what it should be.

It slows down the internet browsing to a crawl (my laptop that has crashed several times, is several years older and runs wireless loads pages faster than my new computer with McAfee).

You can't close it, as others have said, other than uninstalling.

The funniest part I've found, however, is that it warns you the first time it tries to access. Being amused, I refused the program permission to update itself. Other than removing the program, it was the best thing I did using McAfee.

Buyer beware: this program will critically impair your system! Internet loading will be drastically crippled. Expect frequent system choppiness due to automatic downloading and background processes. There is NO WAY to close McAfee to get around these drawbacks other than to uninstall. I am going to return this first thing next week. I gave them a few weeks to improve performance with patches and upgrades, but nothing has changed. If only I had read the reviews ahead of time.
Bottomline: if you don't mind these side-effects, by all means purchase this program; McAfee has solid protection. But there are easier ways to get that protection.

This maybe the worst interface I have ever had the displeasure of working with and that includes console applications with DOS interfaces. Edlin and fdisk are more user friendly than the McAfee's Security Center. There is noway to disable the software except by uninstalling the program or opening XP's admin tools and then forcing the services to stop, which is not a recommenable approach for the average user.

Here is a short list of the probelms that I encountered. Counter Spy is cheaper, easier to use and has an interface that is user friendly!

* cannot select to disable during non-internet use so I can run software that Security Center has conflicts with like ProTools 7.3 recording software.
* the scan results are vague, ie returns 6 quarantined threats but doesn't display what the threats are and you can't print the result either.
* There are more......

There are some good features but the detractors win by a land slide.

This is the worst antivirus software I have ever used. It slowed my computer to a crawl. And they 'lost' my rebate submission and told me to resubmit it. Of course, they failed to tell me that the rebate offer had already expired and I was never getting my money back. Their customer service is the most incompetent I have ever encountered. I will never buy a McAfee product again.

I've been an Information Technology worker for 8 years and this program made me want to pull my hair out. I've been faithful to McAfee for years and then I get this broken product. After installing this software, I had no access to the Internet anymore. I disabled every McAfee program including the firewall and was still unable to access the Internet. Navigating through McAfee's menus is next to impossible as nothing is clearly sorted or defined. In older products I could right-click the M in the system tray and easily disable whatever servce I wanted. Now I have to dig way down in categories trying to find the program to disable. I ended up uninstalling everything but Virus Scan, to get my Internet access back. I guess I'll reinstall each part one by one to find the program that is killing my Internet access. This program after installation metaphorically puts your computer in a straightjacket and you end up playing Houdini to get out of the trap. Even for an Information Technology professional, this program is difficult to use.

The first three times I loaded an unloaded this software - I could not access any internet pages. After about 5 minutes of trying to load a page, a message states that it is blocked by McAfee because the system is not running - or some crazy message like that. Internet was connected and McAfee would download updates, but no way would any internet page load. Tried loading custom with different combinations of services, but the best I got was a five minute wait to load [...], and then unable to open any pther pages. Last resort I loaded antivirus only and can connect a normal speeds (at least for now). A romp through the McAfee user forums highlighted lots of system performance and software performance complaints that are not resolved. I'm running this on a brand new Toshiba Cored 2 Duo notebook with plenty of RAM and XP. So I purchased an 8 in 1 product of which I am using 1 of 8. Not to mention the time I wasted trying various configurations to fix the issues so I could use all products. Very poor product not ready for prime time. Shame on McAfee.