Customer Reviews

VirusScan Home 8.0 and Personal Firewall Plus 5.0 Bundle

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

MY SYSTEM:
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AMD Athlon 1.4(overclocked to 1.5)
Asus A7V333 Mobo
Corsair 512MB PC2700CAS2 DDR
Windows XP Professional SP1

INTRO:
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I'd been using Norton Internet Security 2003 for over a year, but my subscription ran out. I have been reading such horror stories about the 2004 version and it's activation woes, that I decided to return to McAfee for a try. After just week, I've decided that one product truly stands out above the other. Mind you, I'm not happy about any software company using the activation process, so I really did want to like the McAfee offering. So what happened?

Security Center Screenshot:
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http://images.mcafee.com/common/screenshots/msc_vso_696x540.gif

THE GOOD:
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* Easy installation
* Easy automatic product update
* Nice looking interface and icons
* Inexpensive (though, with rebates, YMMV)

THE BAD & THE UGLY:
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* You cannot uninstall McAfee Security Center and cannot use VirusScan without it.
* McAfee seems too desperate with their attempt to integrate all of their products into their McAfee Security Center. They have a security "index" in which they attempt to make the user aware of how secure they are. But the indexes are skewed and I believe they are trying to breed fear into the user to get the user to purchase their other products. Even though you may only have installed VirusScan and Personal Firewall, the Security Center still shows Privacy Service and SpamKiller tabs. Any curious joe would wonder what were in those other tabs. And the curious joe would find offers for 30-day trials on those other products. Once you install the trials, your security index miraculously improves.
* Though the GUI is nice and pretty, it's slow and painfully unintuitive.
* Start-up splash screen cannot be disabled.
* I'm unsure which of the two is the culprit, but either VirusScan or Personal Firewall seriously slowed up my web browsing with Internet Explorer 6.0. Once I uninstalled them both, IE6 was back to normal. I would guess Personal Firewall caused this with some proxy issue.
* VirusScan does not provide time stats on how long a full system scan takes. I find Norton's stats to be useful for when I want to fire up a manual scan and know when I can come back to the computer.

SUMMARY:
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What I was hoping for was an efficient software product to protect my computer from viruses and trojan horses. What I found was that while it did protect my computer, it did it in a way that was not very efficient. As I said, I despise activation schemes from software companies, but I despise ad-laden software even more. If I'm paying for a product, I expect not to have to see any ads, PERIOD. I personally would recommend Symantec's line of security products over McAfee's. However, you can decide yourself. Both Symantec and McAfee have 15-day trial periods for virus software and I believe both do as well for their firewall products.

Be forewarned that once your year's worth of free updating of virus files expires, McAfee ironically begins popping up repeat windows warning you of impending expiration, and then expiration, and this continues and even presents multiple pop-ups during one session. I've written them repeatedly and you might as well contact the Great Wall. I hate to switch but any company that does that to a paid customer exhibits brazen insensitivity to the whole spam nightmare. They're not the same company I thought they were, apparently.

This is horrible. I have been a user of McAfee products for the last 6 years now and have been reasonably happy. Until I bought this piece of junk (yes, I'm seldom this vociferous about my feelings for software).

Anyway, in the past one of the things I liked about VirusScan was that it kept me, the user, in control of things. I bought VirusScan and ONLY used VirusScan. I disabled all the other fancies McAfee shipped with the product since I did not need them.

NOW with VirusScan 8, I cannot uninstall (or even disable) Security Center. It runs and tells me things I am not interested in, takes up PC resources and pops things up when I least need them. I also tried to modify my update options to "manual" instead of automatic, but the software does not update DATs manually (gives some Registry Read error). Its as if they have got me under their spell (in keeping with the "Lord of the Rings") Anyway, this is the LAST McAfee product I am getting and I highly recommend you buy a Symantec product instead.

Since I last wrote this, I discovered another abomination from McAfee Support itself. Even though there is an option for "manual update", one cannot actually update the DATs manually. One HAS to do so automatically via Security Center. So after one year, one HAS to buy another subscription to McAfee if one is to remain protected from viruses.

Hope this helps.

I purchased this product and then had trouble installing it. I called the customer service line only to find that for technical assistance you must call a 900 number and pay $2.95 per minute. Then I decided to call the non-tecnical customer service line where I waited for more than an hour before handing up. Competition in this area is limited, but next itme, I'll find it!

I had Norton anti-virus before I got this. Mcafee picked up twelve different spyware programs in my computer,where as the Norton anti-virus never picked them up at all. Then I was able to delete and quarentine them.Wonderful-only problem I have is with the rebate form.You"ll see what I mean.

I've used McAfee for years, and liked it better than Norton. However, Version 8 is an absurd step backwards. Unlike previous versions (and all other virus scanners I've seen) you cannot configure automatic scans to not scan network drives or specific directories. There doesn't seem to be a log of what was scanned so there's no way to check what has happened. The script blocker doesn't have any mechanism to specify some scripts as ok to run.

Overall this is pretty ridiculous release.

I have to admit I didn't have a problem with loading the software on the Windows XP operating system. However, sometimes I do get an error message when I try to download an update. My main problem with McAfee is that they promote their products with mail-in rebate offers, then find some petty reason not to honor them. I upgraded from McAfee ver. 4 to McAfee ver. 8 and Firewall ver. 5. They claim that I have not proven my upgrade. I submitted the bar codes from the boxes of the old and new versions. It's not my fault that the box does not have MCAFEE printed on the bottom. It's their product. They should be able to read from the bar code. That's okay. I had read that McAfee operated like this. They don't have to worry about me purchasing their products and getting my hopes up that they will honor their own promotions.

If you are a novice computer usere or you ever need help from McAfee, don't purchase from them. Their customer service is HORRIBLE!
Details:
I first recieved McAfee with my new Dell computer - loved it for the first 90 days. Had no problems, download smoothly. Like other users, their asking price for another year of virus scan, firewall, privacy service, and spam killer was too much. So I purchased the Internet Security suite, followed the instructions and when I tried to register, it didn't work. I attempted it again, only to find that they didn't have the bundle listed as an option. So I registered them all separately since Customer service didn't answer. When I did, it wouldn't let me load updates for virus scan and wanted ADDITIONAL money for a year subscription. On the 3rd email, I asked them 3 questions and they the only question they answered was one I DIDN'T ask and that I already knew the answer.

VirusScan 8.0 uses less memory than its competition and Personal Firewall Plus has blocked many, many pings and hacker attempts. Has an automatic updater, so you never have to worry about it. Simple to uninstall, just use the add/remove programs. Also includes the ability to trace any attack. Great for reporting Hacker attempts. Highly Recommended if you use Windows and IE!!

I would advise STAYING AWAY from all McAfee AntiVirus products. It hogs up to much resources on the computer. It makes way longer boot up time. And to make things worse.......They cut off my updates after only 8 Months. I paid for the 1 FULL Year of updates. I emailed them but they could care less. I am now using EZ Armor AntiVirus & Firewall. They work great and boot up time is way faster. STAY AWAY FROM McAfee !