Customer Reviews

VirusScan Home Edition 7.0

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(42)

 

 

While McAfee has certainly raised the bar for its Virus protection, this latest public offering grates a little on my nerves. What gets my goat, you ask? The infuriating lack of a "Disable System Scanning" option that was available in previous versions of the program. This means that system scanning, e-mail scanning, and internet scanning are no longer separate (and individually tweakable) functions. In 7.0, if you turn of scanning, you turn off just about everything else. With my aging, but still spry, Windows 98 machine, I am forced to sacrifice my used-to-be-comfortable-speed before the altar of complete virus protection. Since I have a solid, stand alone computer, a virus' chance of sneaking into my system came only through e-mail or a malicious website. I didn't need to do constant, in-depth system scanning and I still don't need to now. Windows XP users, or others with more super-capacity capabilites, may not find this a problem but for us lite-internet surfers with older machines, it can be a major hassle. To be fair, I'll give it a couple of weeks but if I'm still not impressed, it's back to its predecessor.

To sum up: Is the program great? Yes. Firewall fantastic? You betcha. And it's got more bells and whistles than most fire trucks. But as for individual customization? I give it a big, fat "[zero]"!

McAfee's one of the premier virus scanners around. However, like with the proverbial 600-pound gorilla Microsoft, McAfee can cop a major attitude with customers.

When I upgraded my XP machine from VirusScan 6.0 to 7.0, I had to go through several install-reboot-unistall-reboot-reinstall-reboot cycles before the installation finally "took." Until I hit the jackpot, the program wouldn't initiate properly, would hang, would crash after popping up unintelligible error messages, or wouldn't "remember" settings from a previous session.

Worst of all, if you aren't lucky enough to have a successful installation, you have to PAY FOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT TO GET THE PROGRAM YOU PAID FOR TO WORK PROPERLY. (You can use the online help service for free -- but this will be helpful only if your issue is a FAQ.)

Imagine if you purchased a new car that wouldn't start properly and you had to pay the dealer to tell you how to fix it. A 60 Minutes camera crew would be at the dealership's doors!

I've pre-ordered VirusScan 7.0 because I used the beta version and I was EXTREMELY impressed. Very stable, easy-to-use, and comes with an excellent firewall. I have found the slowdown problems of the past version to be nonexistent. I have VirusScan set to run in the background scanning all files with heuristics scanning and there is no noticeable performance impact! The beta version I am using is so good I just had to pre-order the final release!

The firewall is NOT a cheap add-on to allow McAfee to add another blurb on the box...it is a full featured firewall that I find much better than ZoneAlarm. It is nicely integrated with VirusScan, too. The updating features are especially impressive...McAfee gives you a great level of control over the virus definition updating process that Norton simply does not.

My company uses McAfee and I spend a good portion of my week helping users resolve virus problems and damaged caused by viruses. I've also used other Anti-virus software and from my experience McAfee has been the least reliable and the most problematic. First of all, they are usually the last to release DAT files to catch and repair viruses. Second, they have released DAT files and superDAT (virus scan engine) files that have caused their application to either consume 99-100% of cpu time or to misreport activity as a virus and prompt the user to delete the file. This happened to me once last year and again 2 weeks ago. Thirdly, if you plan to visit their homepage, get a popup killer. The main page is loaded with pop up ads trying to market various products. Fourth, the virus removal tools or registry edits, when available, are typically not designed for the average user to implement. Personally, the first places I check for virus removal tools and information are Trend Micro and Symantec.

If you're looking for a reliable and more user friendly antivirus application, I would suggest purchasing Norton/Symantec Antivirus. If you're looking for something that is free, try AVG Antivirus. I haven't tried this myself, but I've heard it is a good application that offers free antivirus updates.

Can't beat the price of this item (after rebate). In the battle between Norton and McAfee, now McAfee offers a competitive upgrade rebate that allows you to get money back even if you are upgrading from a Norton product. I'd stack this anti-virus program up against anything on the market for the home user and have found the interface to be very user friendly. Updates via the web are very easy and can be automated to occur when you connect. You can schedule your drives for scanning anytime and this version even comes with McAfee's Firewall program which keeps your PC safe while connected to the web.
BOTTOM LINE: A 1st class product with an unbeatable price (after rebate)

I have used VirusScan 5.21 together with Black Ice Defender firewall without any problems other than significant slowing down of the system at times. I purchased VirusScan 6.0 but decided not to install it given the large number of problems reported on this webpage. Having read the favorable comments on VirusScan 7.0, I decided to purchase it (free with the special offers at the time from McAfee and Amazon.com)and give it a try.
The results are amazing! I have not had my computer (a 450 mhz- "slow" these days!)operate so well since I purchased it four years ago! Absolutely everything runs extremely well, with no slowdown of anything whatsoever!
The amount of information McAfee provides with respect to all aspects of what is happening all of the time is astounding! Installation is very, very easy- no problems at all! I very highly recommend it and appreciate having customer reviews on this website!

It wasn't too long ago that anti-virus software was very difficult to install and use, which is why many computer users just went without and hoped for the best. But McAfee has been working to improve their products, and VirusScan 7.0 is proof that they are succeeding.

VirusScan 7.0 is one of the easiest programs to install. With just a few clicks, it was installed on my computer and I had an emergency boot disk as well. The user guide that comes with it is very well laid out and answered most (though not all) of my questions. 30 minutes are starting, I had installed and set-up my new VirusScan.

There are many improvements in version 7.0 over its predecessor. Updating the program over the Internet is much easier, as is getting around the program itself. They have simplified and combined some of the different controls, and have also added a Script Stopper to help keep errant scripts from taking over your computer (already, it has identified three unruly scripts on my computer and I've only had it for two weeks).

Like it's predecessor, VirusScan 7.0 comes with a firewall program. Though it may be me, I have never had much success with this firewall program and so I opted not to install it (use the custom install to do this). However, since I bought this product for the anti-virus capabilities I don't feel cheated at all. I am very happy with it.

I bought this & had nothing but problems. Computer freeze, computer crashes. Now to top it off, 2 viruses got through. McAfees response? If I purchase their upgrade they'll send me the cure. Why didnt the virus scan catch the virus??

Plain & simple-this does not work.

My ISP gave me a free cure on Klez & bigboy worm.
I uninstalled McAfee & my computer is back to normal.

McAfee support is more money hungry than customer oriented.

More important,
McAfee's products cannot be trusted,
they do not work.

It doesn't support email agents other than MS Outlook. So you are not protected when you are using other email agents.

Desktop, XP: During install said that it was not compatible with ZoneAlarm Pro, and I should remove it, NOT. This is not an acceptable position to NOT be disclosed prior to purchase. There are many millions of copies ZA and it is the best software firewall on the market. I installed VirusScan anyway with no immediate problems. But during the first day or so I began experiencing frequent periods where no data was passed to the Internet, so I uninstalled VirusScan. During the short-time I used it, I too had big memory leaks, on the nature of 20-50 megs when running scans. Scans were fast and background monitoring was leak free and did not seem to slow my system. The new Outlook scan feature was unacceptably slow, it slowed Outlook by a factor of 3 or 4, and Outlook is not fast anyway. Fortunately this feature can be turned off, and the default is off.

Notebook 98: Installed fine and works fine, but I am not running a firewall on my notebook. Also did not slow this machine at all, and this is an old 366 with 128 meg ram. Found a virus on the first virus scan of the hard disk.