Rating:

Most of the first year’s subscription was wasted with the software’s being deleted from my system because it was incompatible with my computer. It sent up blocking algorithms that wouldn’t allow Internet Explorer to load, slowed my computer often to a crawl, would crash my computer when coming out of hibernation, and took forever to load itself to do a scan. I have a 3 GHz, 2 GB RAM Workstation with what would seem to be more than adequate resources to run even this bloated program. It did seem to catch some spyware that Norton Internet Security, Spyware Blaster, and Adaware, in the aggregate, missed in its long comprehensive scan, but it just wasn’t worth the incredible nuisance. I had many email exchanges with their Tech Support which was very prompt and polite, and furnished several suggestions, none of which seemed to help.

With the raves in the media, and before all the negative customer reviews started appearing, I thought my problems were due to conflicts which SD was confronting with other software on my computer, as a specific problem.

When their latest iteration of version 5 came out, I thought I would give it one more try and, I guess being a glutton for punishment, I recently renewed my subscription, based on the encouragement provided by their Tech Support and the recent PC World review. Well, unfortunately it was “business as usual” in all respects, other than the problem with IE and startup time which had been solved.

After a few more exchanges with Tech Support, they kindly offered to refund my subscription renewal cost, and that was accomplished immediately upon my request.

Now realizing, out in the real world, as evidenced by the numerous similar customer difficulties reported, that this program, however well intentioned, is just not ready for prime time, I would advise people to pass on Spyware Doctor 5. Hopefully, PC Tools has gotten the message, and is diligently working on Version 6 which will successfully address the numerous problems that plague this program in its current state of development.

Bottom line: AVOID…..not recommended.

Rating:

Strengths: Good at scanning for viruses and malware. Tons of features, easy to use. Report and monitor internet attempts/ Hits on your PC. Pretty bells sounds and graphs.

Weaknesses: Terrible load times and slow to respond. Kept crashing after roughly 9 months of use – customer service was terrible. Can bog down system though not as bad as Norton Internet security suite. Nightmare to update, renew, and if something goes wrong, another nightmare to uninstall. Poor Tech support.

Overall Evaluation: If you can get it to load, and get it to respond (even on a fairly quick computer it took forever), then it’s a decent protection package. However, if you really don’t know a lot about protection programs or have a very short temper when it comes to computers, I suggest staying away – this package causes headaches and so does customer support. As owner of my equipment I agree to abide by software protocols. McAfee is different. Once their software GRABS your PC. You cannot escape. Sooner you will delete essential files than remove McAfee from registry. The software written not to be deleted. Scare?? yup.. I’ve experienced this FIRST hand. McAfee has “parasite” my unit so I had to rebuild. Mcafee has unveiled an improved UI, which makes the software easier to use. It seems effective in protecting my machines from harm, but couldn’t it do it without bogging down my computers so much?

Rating:

I have two computers, one of which runs Vista Home Premium and the other runs XP Home. Both were running the 2008 version. On the XP box, the installation was smooth and seamless, and after a reboot all was well. The Vista machine had some issues, though, during the installation of each component, where it would complain about a file that either had an invalid path or that could not be overwritten. I was offered a Retry/Cancel dialog box, and in every case the Retry button worked, but having to click over and over again during installation was annoying. I am assuming it was because it was an upgrade, not a fresh install, though both machines were upgrades. After the Vista install was complete, there were no more headaches.

I was pleased to see that my settings for the 2008 version were retained for the 2009 version.

I noticed something unpleasant between the systems that grabbed my attention, but only because I was looking for differences. The memory usage on the Vista computer is MUCH lower than that on the XP system, for reasons unknown. That said, the performance does not seem to be appreciably different.

On the same note, I have noticed that with the 2009 version installed the XP system ran faster than it did with the 2008 version loaded. The Vista machine’s performance seems to be unchanged.

Next I will discuss the firewall, as that seems to be where the majority of noticeable changes have occurred. With the 2008 version, there were several settings for the firewall that could be made with the adjustment of a slider control. These level settings ranged between Off, Trusting, Standard, Tight, Stealth, and Lockdown (or some minor variation there of – I did not write these down before I upgraded). With the 2009 version, these have been replaced with just three slider settings – Automatic, Standard and Stealth. Lockdown is in a different area. The reduced number of options is not necessarily a bad thing, and I suspect it now matches the actual usage patterns that are prevalent in the software’s usage. I always set mine to Stealth and saw no reason to change. When I tested the firewall for security, I was unable to locate a test that caused the firewall to fail, and I was pleased that the firewall prevented my computer from responding to any kind of probe or echo requests.

I discovered a curiosity in the firewall’s application filters. The filters allow you to set up access rules for any and all applications on your system which is very handy when you have a useful application that you want to keep from accessing the network (such as Acrobat Reader, in my case). After the upgrade several applications in the rule sets that were still loaded on my system were listed as no longer installed. I am not sure what happened there, and I deleted these errant rules. I believe these were probably cosmetic issues, but regardless it was something that drew my attention.

The antivirus seems to be virtually unchanged between the 2008 and 2009 versions. The antivirus is very thorough and stable, doing an excellent job of scanning the system. I discovered a check box in the AV settings, that allows you to specify minimal resource usage during a scan. The information help that comes with it states very clearly that AV scanning is a low-priority background task when this option is taken, and it seems to work very much as advertised. With this option checked, McAfee’s AV is absolutely the slowest AV I have ever used (600,000 files in 3.5 hours), but it also is so gentle on system resources that it does not impact anything and you might not know it’s running except for the animated scanning icon in the system tray.

The parental controls in McAfee’s suite are, in my opinion, nearly useless. If you want to block anything, you have to specify that you want it blocked, so there is no pregenerated list of URLs. Keyword filtering is a more useful aspect of the filter system, yet it still requires some manual entry.

I like the site advisor, which provides some clues as to the safety of the web sites you visit. It does not prevent you from going there, but it does tell you when you have found a potentially harmful site. That says that McAfee is tracking some kind of URL set, yet it does not make the set available to the parental control component which is unfortunate.

The antispam component does a fair job of catagorizing email, though I elected to turn it off because I use a different antispam product. With the standard settings, I find that determination of spam is a little trigger-happy but not unreasonable.

I played with the “Manage Network” component and like the mapping of the network topology. Though it is not something I personally need, it is undoubtedly useful to system administrators who need to see the lay of the land at a quick glance.

With McAfee Internet Security installed on both machines, I have seen no appreciable issues and my systems are well protected. I like the firewall configuration and I really like the fact that the antivirus is so gentle on the system when scanning. The other components in the system – with the exception of the parental controls – are sufficient protection for home and SOHO users, though not all are features I use. I am comfortable recommending this package based on my positive experience with it – it is a fine solution for anyone wishing to protect their system without bringing it to its knees.

Rating:

There is also a 1-User version for those looking for limited systems, but they are so close in price that it usually makes more sense to get the 3-user version. Keep in mind that once you install the 3-user version on one machine, the clock starts ticking. So you have to use it for 3 users concurrently. You cannot install it on the same machine for 3 years in a row. Like most anti-virus products, the license includes virus definition updates for only one year.

Unfortunately, there are still some shortcomings that make these programs less ideal for power users. As time goes on, more and more home users are starting to fall into that category.

Over the past year I have been testing a variety of security suites and anti-virus programs for a work-related project. This includes multiple versions of Norton for both home and business environments, McAfee, Trend Micro Antivirus + Antispyware 2009, Bitdefender Internet Security 2009 and others. I also continue to use some of the freeware alternatives on a few of my personal machines, including AVG and Avast. I do not want to outline or rank all the programs here. I only want to provide a context for how I came to some of these conclusions regarding McAfee’s relative strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strengths make this a good program for hands-off home users, but more demanding users may want to look elsewhere.

The biggest improvement that McAfee has incorporated into their product is a much more efficient scanning engine that is more resource friendly than prior versions. In terms of *online* scanning of files, this program runs faster than most alternatives. It also uses less memory, at least for the anti-virus engine.

But in terms of system impact, there still appears to be a performance hit from using this product for certain situations. Certain types of internet applications just seem slower. It also adds a noticeable delay to the startup time. I tested clean install images with updated service packs before and after installing this program. I speculate that some of the other elements of the program, such as the anti-phishing and anti-spyware, may be using other processes in memory and slowing down performance only for applications that trigger them.

Ironically, it seems like those components do not work as well as the included alternatives in competing programs. Testing these out in a lab environment, the McAfee program was one of the slowest to detect spyware and phishing risks for known vulnerabilities. There are some additional features that can compensate for that on the enterprise version of the product, but on this one you just have to accept that it is slightly slower at detecting those things.

The “Total Protection” version of the product also includes a network aware component that may appeal to SMB customers. That program is supposed to detect rogue network devices and similar risks, but I have seen poor to mixed results with it. I suspect there is overhead in this program for those features included in Total Protection version of the product that haven’t been activated here. I can’t be 100% sure, but considering how much faster the anti-virus engine runs it is one possible reason why there is still a slowdown of system performance for certain situations.

One other thing that I noticed was that the newest version of Norton Internet Security has a much more detailed application firewall. For those that use many complex internet applications that require custom settings, that program offers more granular control for those willing to dig down into the settings. The basics are all covered here, but it is not as easily reconfigured. On the same token, the default setting of the program requires constant confirmation for the system to adjust security settings for your applications. It is possible to limit these warnings, but the configuration is not set ideally out of the box.

CONCLUSION

The strengths of the program are the improved easy to use interface and faster anti-virus scanning. This 2009 version will definitely use less system memory than prior versions, at least directly. It seems easy to punish McAfee and Norton for their past sins, but both products have improved slightly in that regard. But you still have to decide if you really need some of the cleaner interface and faster scanning of these products, since there are free products that will do the same job and save you the annual subscription cost. Also make sure that you know what features are most important to you. If you need more control of your application firewall settings, you may want to explore the alternatives.

Good luck with your software purchase.

Enjoy.

Rating:

It has a simple, user friendly appearance and a choice of two interfaces -basic and advanced. It should be noted that some of the options are only available to persons logged in as “administrators” and not to the other users on your computer with limited permissions. If you’re the only user you can consider yourself promoted to Administrative level.

“So what does it DO?” enquiring minds want to know. Well, here goes.

1. It provides a firewall as your computer’s first line of defense against identity theft, viruses, spyware, spam, hackers and other bad things that go “bump” in cyberspace. There’s a “lockdown” feature that stops all internet access with one click.

2. It makes web-surfing safer by rating your search results, as well as the sites you visit, using a color code. Green = safe; Yellow = caution; Red = get the heck out of there NOW. (Works with Google, Yahoo! And MSN searches.)

3. Automatic updates and upgrades

4. Stops viruses in their tracks, as well as worms, Trojans and other slimy things, and then automatically cleans or quarantines the little boogers. The QuickScan feature patrols the vulnerable areas of your computer to check for threats.

5. Offers you a “stealth mode” that blocks incoming network connections so you can lurk on the internet without being detected by hackers.

6. Blocks spyware, adware, and other bad “wares” from stealing your log-ins and passwords, tracking your cookies, or filling your screen with pop-ups.

7. Keeps your computer uncluttered with a QuickClean system that takes out the trash, such as temporary files, cached files, lost file fragments, deleted e-mail messages and other undesirable junk.

8. It includes a “Shredder” for permanently deleting top secret documents such as love letters or romantic poems penned under the influence. To make it even cooler, there are three different shredding levels.

9. Automatically recognizes spam, phish and scams, fake virus messages and all that weird foreign language stuff, and stops it from filling your in-box

10. Provides different levels of blocking depending on the age or maturity level of your child. It has easy to understand settings like “young child”, “child”, “younger teen”, “older teen” or “adult”. Age appropriate searching makes sure that the safety filters of some popular search engines are enabled. It uses keyword filtering and even blocks offensive images.

11. Provides an automatic back-up feature which requires the installation of Microsoft.net Framework 1.1

12. Tactfully defers certain updates and alerts while you’re watching movies or playing games in full-screen mode to prevent interruptions.

Recommended for PCs and small networks, families with internet-savvy kids and people who like to go into sites marked with 3 X’s.

Amanda Richards, October 15, 2008

Rating:

Installation was trouble free. McAfee gives you the choice of installing the version on your CD or downloading the most current version. This is a sensible approach, I think. I chose the download it sent smoothly. Even with the downloading, the install went pretty quickly.

For my testing, I installed it on a system running Windows XP SP2 Media Center, having first uninstalled the free Comodo anti-virus and firewall applications running on the machine.

I could not complete the registration/activation process because McAfee’s server did not respond. Thus, I was unable to learn if McAfee still forces you to give them a credit card number for automatic renewal of your anti-virus subscription. You weren’t able to cancel this forced transaction online: you had to call McAfee. A poor way to do business in my opinion.

McAfee may have changed this policy somewhat. In combing through their Customer Support area, I learned that it may only be online purchasers who get nailed this way.

The problem with an ordinary person testing ant-virus programs is that unlike a formal lab, they may not have a bunch of viruses and malware lurking in their machines. I can tell you that the anti-virus scanning speed appears to be high and doesn’t over burden the CPU, which is nice when compared with some other programs, like Norton’s.

The Help file will leave most users pretty much in the dark with its brusque explanations. For example, an inexperienced user wanting to change the firewall settings for some reason may quickly be reduced to pulling their hair out.

McAfee, to its credit, does an excellent job of identifying the applications on your machine and setting the right firewall permissions for them. I don’t know how it will do when you add new programs to your system.

McAfee has put a lot of features into Internet Security 2009 at a very reasonable price for three users. Some of them, such as the file shredder and file cleaner, aren’t mentioned on the box. Neither is the back up program or the network manager. I didn’t try any of these features.

Overall, I think Internet Security 2009 is an improved product over last year’s version. It seems to execute faster and hog fewer system resources. Happily the number of inrusive pop-ups seems to have been substantialy reduced. For the money, it seems to be a good, solid product.

Jerry